So everyone was really helpful with my last question about defense vs soak, so I'm hoping I can get some input on something else. Damage vs. Crits.

Specifically, the current character I'm working on comes from a background where he had to take people alive a lot, so he focused heavily on brawling skills (We're using the rules for an alternate setting where the guns don't have stun settings). Now he's in a different position and he's fighting for his life.

So I've been looking at the rules and gear available to me and I've come up with 2 different builds to realize this concept.

First is a more Damage oriented build. A 4 brawn marauder with a pair of blast knuckles. Between his brawn, weapon, and talents, I have him coming out of char-gen doing 10 damage a hit. Essentially, he punches as hard as a heavy rifle.

Second is a more subtle idea. A gadgeteer with a pair of vibro-knucks. Still 4 brawn, but now he's got 2 ranks in brawl. I take jury-rigged and use it to drop the crit cost of his knuckles to 1. So he more or less gets a critical injury every time he connects with a punch.

Lemme stress I'm not trying to munchkin here, but the gm has told me over and over that melee is at a disadvantage compared to ranged, which makes sense, but I'm trying to build a character who's going to be able to overcome that, and I want to know which of these two builds is likely to carry me farther.

Crits is good, so is Damage. Either way if you're hitting often you will be taking lots of enemies down. Even my personal choice would depend on the character I wanted to play.

More importantly though - whatever you choose - an experienced GM will give you your moments to shine, but also find ways to challenge you. Find an INTERESTING combination then look for unique ways to use it. Don't see everything as a nail and your characters speciality the hammer.

If an enemy is at Long range how do you react?

How will you handle inaccessible ranged foes?

What will a high soak enemy do to you?

How about a group of 10 Minions?

What will you do in starship combat?

...

Social encounters make up more than half the encounters in many of my games, what will you do then?

Will you win initiative or rely on others?

Can you find the gear you want to buy, or is another PC helping you there?

Hand-to-hand (Melee or Brawl skill combat) honestly doesn't seem to be at too much of a disadvantage in the game, not in the game we play. In the group I'm in, we have 4 players, and I'm the only ranged combatant. Well, 2 of the other 3 have ranged weapons but no real skill in them so they're almost all fighting hand-to-hand. One fights bare-handed but is a doctor with the Pressure Point talent and is brutal against armored enemies (Stormtroopers never see him coming). Another is a mechanic who fights with shock gloves and a blast knuckle. The third is a Jedi-wannabe who fights using melee and a two-handed vibrosword.

While hand-to-hand has the disadvantage of having to keep within the Engaged range band, for the most part ranged combatants want to be in Short range for optimal performance (base difficulty of 1 to hit) so a hand-to-hand fighter usually is just having to move just one extra range band to hit the opponent, which means they're giving up their free maneuver that would otherwise be used for things like aiming and taking cover. Not good, but it's not gimping you. And if your opponent is ranged, by being engaged with them they have to raise their attack roll by 1 or 2 difficulty (depending on what kind of weapon it is). Of course, another major downside is that attacking with hand-to-hand you roll 2 difficulty, but again not that big of a deal.

Hand-to-hand damage is usually pretty comparable to damage from Ranged (Light) weapons. Let's compare a vibrosword with a heavy blaster pistol (which I think is fair, they have a similar cost). If you have a reasonable Brawn stat (let's say 4, which I think would be a good minimum if you are building around hand-to-hand) then you're doing 6 base damage per hit (your Brawn of 4 plus 2 from the weapon). The heavy blaster pistol has a damage of 7, which isn't modified or dependent on characteristic values. So the pistol does more damage. However, the vibrosword has the Pierce 2 quality, which means it ignores 2 points of soak. Since almost everything you're going to attack will have at least 2 points of soak (including your average naked human being) that equates to +2 damage, meaning that the sword actually does more damage. In addition, the sword has Vicious 1 (add +10 to critical strike results), Defensive 1 (other hand-to-hand attacks gain a setback die when attacking you), and has a crit rating of 2 compared to the pistol's rating of 3, so it's easier to crit with it. You're potentially more deadly with the sword than someone would be with the blaster.

If you really want to be a beast, get your Brawn to 5 (not hard if you pick a species that starts with Brawn 3, it would cost 90 XP at character creation which should be doable) and grab a vibro-ax. You're inflicting 8 base damage (5 Brawn +3 from the weapon) which is really a 10 damage when you count the Pierce 2, giving it more damage than a blaster rifle. It has Vicious 3, only requires a crit of 2, and you can break an enemy's weapon with Sunder. And it only costs 50 credits more than a heavy blaster pistol. If your character is a Marauder you stack the damage on top of that; going through the tree you can get Feral Strength adding up to 3 more damage, and can get Lethal Blows 3 times (allowing your vibro-axe to do +60 on a critical strike, which can outright kill an opponent in one hit if you roll in the 90s on your percentile). With Frenzied Attack you can upgrade your attack up to 3 times, making it even easier to hit and crit an enemy. You're more dangerous than a disruptor rifle at that point!

To get to your question... Damage seems to be better to stack for minions, and crits for the big bad. If you're fighting minions, you can't get more than a single crit on a single blow, and you don't roll for a crit, the crit just takes out one enemy, So things like Vicious and Lethal Blows mean nothing against minions, and having something like a weapon that crits with one Advantage isn't that great either. But against a Rival or Nemesis, the ability to easily crit can change the tide of a battle. Once you start impairing them, the enemy stops being as much of a threat. And each crit stacks on top of previous ones, getting progressively worse.

So decide what kind of fighter you want to be. Do you want to be the one wading into a pack of goons, striking like a whirlwind and tossing them around like leaves? Or do you want to be the one to stand up to the big boss leading those goons, punch him where it hurts, and take out the bigger single threat? Both roles are important.

Me, personally, I ended up going the crit route, as it seems more fun. I fight with ranged weapons but I use precision attacks that have a very high chance to crit and give me powerful crits. That's either with a disruptor rifle I looted and upgraded with some attachments, or my very heavily-modified blaster pistol on a wrist mount with a laser sight that is jury rigged to get a crit with one advantage. If I wanted to mow down minions I would probably have gone with something that had autofire, which is less effective against someone with a lot of soak but can potentially take out a whole squad of minions in a single round. My character's background as an assassin steered me toward the choices I made, but I could have gone the other way if I'd made him something like a former soldier.

Hand-to-hand (Melee or Brawl skill combat) honestly doesn't seem to be at too much of a disadvantage in the game, not in the game we play. In the group I'm in, we have 4 players, and I'm the only ranged combatant. Well, 2 of the other 3 have ranged weapons but no real skill in them so they're almost all fighting hand-to-hand. One fights bare-handed but is a doctor with the Pressure Point talent and is brutal against armored enemies (Stormtroopers never see him coming). Another is a mechanic who fights with shock gloves and a blast knuckle. The third is a Jedi-wannabe who fights using melee and a two-handed vibrosword.

While hand-to-hand has the disadvantage of having to keep within the Engaged range band, for the most part ranged combatants want to be in Short range for optimal performance (base difficulty of 1 to hit) so a hand-to-hand fighter usually is just having to move just one extra range band to hit the opponent, which means they're giving up their free maneuver that would otherwise be used for things like aiming and taking cover. Not good, but it's not gimping you. And if your opponent is ranged, by being engaged with them they have to raise their attack roll by 1 or 2 difficulty (depending on what kind of weapon it is). Of course, another major downside is that attacking with hand-to-hand you roll 2 difficulty, but again not that big of a deal.

Hand-to-hand damage is usually pretty comparable to damage from Ranged (Light) weapons. Let's compare a vibrosword with a heavy blaster pistol (which I think is fair, they have a similar cost). If you have a reasonable Brawn stat (let's say 4, which I think would be a good minimum if you are building around hand-to-hand) then you're doing 6 base damage per hit (your Brawn of 4 plus 2 from the weapon). The heavy blaster pistol has a damage of 7, which isn't modified or dependent on characteristic values. So the pistol does more damage. However, the vibrosword has the Pierce 2 quality, which means it ignores 2 points of soak. Since almost everything you're going to attack will have at least 2 points of soak (including your average naked human being) that equates to +2 damage, meaning that the sword actually does more damage. In addition, the sword has Vicious 1 (add +10 to critical strike results), Defensive 1 (other hand-to-hand attacks gain a setback die when attacking you), and has a crit rating of 2 compared to the pistol's rating of 3, so it's easier to crit with it. You're potentially more deadly with the sword than someone would be with the blaster.

If you really want to be a beast, get your Brawn to 5 (not hard if you pick a species that starts with Brawn 3, it would cost 90 XP at character creation which should be doable) and grab a vibro-ax. You're inflicting 8 base damage (5 Brawn +3 from the weapon) which is really a 10 damage when you count the Pierce 2, giving it more damage than a blaster rifle. It has Vicious 3, only requires a crit of 2, and you can break an enemy's weapon with Sunder. And it only costs 50 credits more than a heavy blaster pistol. If your character is a Marauder you stack the damage on top of that; going through the tree you can get Feral Strength adding up to 3 more damage, and can get Lethal Blows 3 times (allowing your vibro-axe to do +60 on a critical strike, which can outright kill an opponent in one hit if you roll in the 90s on your percentile). With Frenzied Attack you can upgrade your attack up to 3 times, making it even easier to hit and crit an enemy. You're more dangerous than a disruptor rifle at that point!

To get to your question... Damage seems to be better to stack for minions, and crits for the big bad. If you're fighting minions, you can't get more than a single crit on a single blow, and you don't roll for a crit, the crit just takes out one enemy, So things like Vicious and Lethal Blows mean nothing against minions, and having something like a weapon that crits with one Advantage isn't that great either. But against a Rival or Nemesis, the ability to easily crit can change the tide of a battle. Once you start impairing them, the enemy stops being as much of a threat. And each crit stacks on top of previous ones, getting progressively worse.

So decide what kind of fighter you want to be. Do you want to be the one wading into a pack of goons, striking like a whirlwind and tossing them around like leaves? Or do you want to be the one to stand up to the big boss leading those goons, punch him where it hurts, and take out the bigger single threat? Both roles are important.

Me, personally, I ended up going the crit route, as it seems more fun. I fight with ranged weapons but I use precision attacks that have a very high chance to crit and give me powerful crits. That's either with a disruptor rifle I looted and upgraded with some attachments, or my very heavily-modified blaster pistol on a wrist mount with a laser sight that is jury rigged to get a crit with one advantage. If I wanted to mow down minions I would probably have gone with something that had autofire, which is less effective against someone with a lot of soak but can potentially take out a whole squad of minions in a single round. My character's background as an assassin steered me toward the choices I made, but I could have gone the other way if I'd made him something like a former soldier.

Your points are giving me a lot of confidence about my chosen focus, so thanks. Question about your mechanic's blast knuckle? How much does the strain damage work against him? Like does it tend to slow him down, or is he able to handle it more or less alright?

I like the Gadgeteer tree better. Improved Stunning Blow is fantastic. I'd make a character concept and not focus on the numbers so much, either option you present will work numerically. Which one will you actually have the best background idea for is what I'd play. In the end being the absolute best I find is anticlimatic. It's more satisfying to be victorious with the less than best options I think. That doesn't mean suck, but it does mean stop running numbers and probabilities and tell me where this hero comes from and why they're at my table. A GM is more inspired by good stories just like players, as opposed to who has the character with the best probability spread on skill checks.

Your points are giving me a lot of confidence about my chosen focus, so thanks. Question about your mechanic's blast knuckle? How much does the strain damage work against him? Like does it tend to slow him down, or is he able to handle it more or less alright?

To reinforce what 2P51 said, the vibro-ax comment above was an example of how you could really push hand-to-hand to excel in the game, even with a starting character. But it's fairly Munchkiny and not necessarily the most fun. One thing you don't want to do is make your character too strong in combat. If you're far ahead of the rest of the group them fights can feel lopsided and other people may feel less relevant. And if everyone went all-in on combat to keep up with you then your group would lack non-combat roles. Not very fun. As I said before, I let my character's personality and background govern what I did more than what is mechanically the "best" gear, skills, and talents. I want him to be good at fighting because that's his thing, but I don't want him one-dimensional either.

It sounds like you're good though, you stated you don't want to be a munchkin and you're clearly making choices based on a character concept and not just min-maxing. So you're on the right track and I bet your character will be awesome and fun to play.

Keep in mind that ranks of Lethal Blows and Vicious only matter against Rivals and Nemeses, while raw damage is effective against everything including minions...

Keep in mind that ranks of Lethal Blows and Vicious only matter against Rivals and Nemeses, while raw damage is effective against everything including minions...

I've since branched out into Gadgeteer and with different weapons and the Jury Rig talent I'm a crit machine. In a recent session my GM threw a really tough Nemesis BH at us. I took him on almost solo while the rest of the group took on the minions, and I annihilated him. And since I crippled him so badly and so quickly I came out of it almost unscathed. Part of it was lucky rolls but I wouldn't have been able to take advantage of those rolls in the same way if I was trying to just put out damage. It has been a literal game-changer for me.

So I wouldn't say that raw damage is objectively "better". It's definitely more versatile to go that route, but crits can really shine against the big bad guys much more than increasing damage. I'll just repeat that you should focus on whatever you want to do.

Another wrinkle is that hand-to-hand is effective against humanoids, but rarely a good idea against vehicles. Against even a speeder, that rider's enhanced mobility means that you'll never be in the engaged range band unless he wants you there. Against something armored, like a heavy-armored nemesis or an AT-ST, crits will be better than raw damage. I'll leave the wisdom of engaging an AT-ST in a fistfight to you.

By RAW, with the Knockdown talent if you punched an AT-ST and rolled 3 Triumphs you would knock it over.

Now that's how to impress someone.

By RAW, with the Knockdown talent if you punched an AT-ST and rolled 3 Triumphs you would knock it over.

Now that's how to impress someone.

To put things in more sober terms, as far as attacking vehicles, PC weapons of any sort aren't great. If you want to attack a vehicle and crit, you first need to do damage (like always). Every point of vehicle armor soaks 10 points of personal scale damage. So a vehicle with a modest armor rating of 2 requires dealing more than 20 points of damage to it before a crit can be counted. So crits aren't better than raw damage against a vehicle unless you can do enough raw damage to exceed its armor.

Notably, there are a few personal-scale ranged weapons that have Breach, and so have a reasonable chance of damaging some vehicles. The Golan Arms Flechette Launcher (Dangerous Covenants) and the T-7 Ion Disruptor (Forged in Battle) both have Breach 2, a damage rating of 10+, a crit rating of 2, and Vicious. This makes it feasible to take down some of the more lightly-armored vehicles through crits, but the scaling of personal-scale weapon damage against vehicles means that you're not taking down an AT-AT or even an AT-ST with these. Not unless you have the benefit of a Soldier with "The Bigger They Are..." as a signature ability in the squad.

Your points are giving me a lot of confidence about my chosen focus, so thanks. Question about your mechanic's blast knuckle? How much does the strain damage work against him? Like does it tend to slow him down, or is he able to handle it more or less alright?

The strain cost is not too hard to deal with. Basically any stray Advantages you roll can be used to heal the strain. And with a crit rating of 4, and no active qualities to spend Advantages on, you'll find yourself in that situation often.

To reinforce what 2P51 said, the vibro-ax comment above was an example of how you could really push hand-to-hand to excel in the game, even with a starting character. But it's fairly Munchkiny and not necessarily the most fun. One thing you don't want to do is make your character too strong in combat. If you're far ahead of the rest of the group them fights can feel lopsided and other people may feel less relevant. And if everyone went all-in on combat to keep up with you then your group would lack non-combat roles. Not very fun. As I said before, I let my character's personality and background govern what I did more than what is mechanically the "best" gear, skills, and talents. I want him to be good at fighting because that's his thing, but I don't want him one-dimensional either.

It sounds like you're good though, you stated you don't want to be a munchkin and you're clearly making choices based on a character concept and not just min-maxing. So you're on the right track and I bet your character will be awesome and fun to play.

What if I dual-wield blast knuckles though...?

What if double falcon punch?

You can use two weapon combat with your blast knucklers, and use those Advantage to invoke Linked strike with both. Just remember you'd suffer 2 strain if you hit twice. One bonus though is that the setback die for the Inaccurate quality would only count once (on your first attack with the main weapon) so you benefit that way.

Having two blast knucklers would sure look cool.