I love the idea of fashionable and protective reinforced clothing as uniforms for the group. Because appropriately crafted clothing should be able to go anywhere with you and be completely acceptable as well as giving your group immediate recognition.

My question is would you in general allow the +2 hard points from the armor crafting rules stack with intuitive improvements to give armor 4 hard points. and does this stack with Intergal attachment +1 hp and a 1 hp mod?

I am leaning towards no on both but am curious what others think. Reinforced clothing with 5 hard points is maybe too much.

My current idea is to craft group uniforms of reinforced clothing with the goal of making suits at (2 triumph 11 advantage or 3 triumph 7 advantage) +1 defense +3 soak encumberance 1 (with a choice of bonus advantage in charm, coercion, negotiation, leadership, resilience, stealth) +2 hard points (1 filled with superior quality from intergal attachment) and 1 open from intuitive improvements.

If you are balking at these numbers keep in mind that I am assuming the template is complete and that the difficulty is simple. The crafter has crafted specialist tools which grant (1 success 1 advantage and 1 upgrade to the skill check) (and stacking practice makes perfect on the rolls that don't generate 2 triumph) Obviously the higher your int and mechanics are the better shot you have at this not taking an eternity.

If you guys think every hard point thing can stack then a lot of people in the star wars universe would probably pick crafted reinforced clothing with defense 1 soak 3 enc 1 and 4 open hard points even over off the shelves battle armor.

From a power perspective how badly does the team having these crafted uniforms break the game?

I don't think it really does. Plenty of storebought armor is pretty close to this maybe 1 soak off. The + advantage in one of the chosen skills is nice but not game breaking. (Yeah you are getting the armor for cheaper but this would benefit everyone equally and give the crafter a real sense of contribution to the team)

While this armor will be good its probably not end game for a lot of combat focused PC's who will probably want crafted armor to be worn over this as a good suit of crafted battle armor can have Defense 2 and Soak 4 with 4 extra hard points.

Are you the GM?

If your mechanic can reliably roll 2 triumphs and 11 advantage, then no, the armor wont break the game. I would get really stuffy about 'failed' rolls and making them pay for each try tho.

Its a knight level+ F&D round robin game where we each have a player who acts as an npc while we are running, and I am doing the first arc. (my guess 4-5 sessions). The initial arc is escaping undetected from a core world after an expedition to a jedi temple drew too much imperial attention. The players don't have a ship and the starports are locked down and they need to get off world before the empire finds them. The characters are starting with a holocron and some highly restricted crystals, which they obtained at the temple, but they have not crafted lightsabers.

My character is a human Sentinel Artisan going to focus on computers mechanics and stealth. Its a nice background character to start, but I think will also be enjoyable to play going forward in the next arc.

The crafting of the uniforms and probably some mods to blasters or vibroblades will take place before the start of the game and will cost the appropriate credits per attempt.

The rules do allow for massive amount of boost dice through practice makes perfect, it took 71 checks and cost 1775 to craft 4 suits of the armor, using practice makes perfect for max boost dice when the desired result was not rolled. Ammusingly all 71 checks took exactly 1 hour each.

The stats were int 4 mechanics 5 specialst tool mechanics maxed for +1 success/advantage and upgrading the check. 1 rank in inventor, right tools for the job with mental tools, and an assistant.

But mainly I'd like folks opinion on the hard point issue. Some 3 of those 4 suits rolled well enough on the force check to have 3 hp if stacking intuitive improvements worked with intregal attachment.

My question is would you in general allow the +2 hard points from the armor crafting rules stack with intuitive improvements to give armor 4 hard points. and does this stack with Intergal attachment +1 hp and a 1 hp mod?

Probably... Though I consider the integral attachment to be a permanent upgrade, and non removable.

Offhand I wanted to say no, but after some rolling of:

The stats were int 4 mechanics 5 specialst tool mechanics maxed for +1 success/advantage and upgrading the check. 1 rank in inventor, right tools for the job with mental tools, and an assistant.

With the objective of getting one success or more and:

(2 triumph 11 advantage or 3 triumph 7 advantage)

Multiple times, I found the odds of getting what you want to be sufficiently difficult that even reducing the time to 1 hour per attempt you'll still spend weeks trying to get what you want.

Personally though, if you're planning to just roll over and over until success...why frelling bother? Just do something like multiply the cost by 20 say you spent 3 months working like a PTSD suffering billionaire superhero with a severe case of OCD and insomnia and give yourself the armor without a check.

After all at that point you've basically blown off the adventure/campaign and the purpose of a roll mechanic just to get some snazzy clothes anyway, so you might as well just cut to ending so you can actually play a little star wars that night...

So, if these guys are wearing uniforms as their only armor, doesn’t that mean that they’re going to be trivially easy to track down and find by the Empire?

Wouldn’t the first thing that the PCs want to do is to ditch the uniforms and go with something less conspicuous?

To be honest, the whole concept of letting these extra sources of bonus hard points stack starts to sound pretty Munchkin to me.

For the number of rolls your going to need to make to get that outcome your better off making some better armour. It's such a huge commitment that if I wanted that in my game I wouldn't even bother "making" it. It would be the entire premise for the campaign.

"You are a team of highly trained experts working for a powerful corporation (or the Rebellion, Hutts, Empire etc) given advanced military grade equipment to complete missions others wouldn't even consider attempting."

If they are recognized at some point and identified as force sensitives then yes they will need new gear. The goal is to appear as something else most likely merchants from a trading consortium or some other "non threatening" group.

I agree brad and thats why I wanted to put it out here to see what others think.

As to the difficulty Its not a standard roll well the first one in but the second one if you didn't hit the number you trade all your advantage/triumph in for boost dice and roll the second attempt doing this it took 71 rolls to generate 4 suits. Maybe thats boring to some and I'd never suggest you do it during a session even the crafting books note you can either come early or stay late and make the mechanical rolls. Really it was just a curiousity I could have hand waved it but it was interesting that it took about 2 weeks of game time to generate the suits. Could be more or less depending on how lucky you are.

Again this is not part of the campaign this is previous to the campaign as each character is doing something to help the team and or create a cover for the team being there.

The prelude is essentially the group finds the location of the temple prepares a cover to go there finds a way to get to the planet, , finds said temple and then somehow the imps get wise, but they have not specifically identified the group yet. Without spoiling the plot thats all I'll say.

If they are recognized at some point and identified as force sensitives then yes they will need new gear. The goal is to appear as something else most likely merchants from a trading consortium or some other "non threatening" group.

.

Again this is not part of the campaign this is previous to the campaign as each character is doing something to help the team and or create a cover for the team being there.

OK, again just kinda my dumb observation... instead of spending half a year crafting... why not craft items with more specific goals and functions, and buy the rest?

If you want to look like something else there's already off the shelf purchasable items that do that. banal clothing, military uniforms, resplendent robes, hologhillie suits and holocostumes to name a few. All of these items already have a specific in-game function related to how they appear.

Spend your time crafting items that you can't easily get. So like look at your reinforced clothing: Just adding 1 HP and Sealed and the Vac Sealed attachment it becomes a short-term space suit with an Enc so low you can actually just carry it around! THAT is something you can't just find that would also be super useful. And the check to make it would be child's play.

I couldn't get my players to all dress their PCs the same if I tried (except maybe in a Clone Trooper game), so the idea of team uniforms seems very odd to me.

I dont have an issue with the mechanics of the numbers, but just rolling dice to roll dice seems like video/MMO crafting to me.

Is it broken? No, probably not, but it's definitely Munchkin or gaming-the-system. It seems to me like a huge waste of time (both game time and IRL) for dubious benefits. If you need a costume/uniform to identify the party as part of a trade consortium or some such, a pin/brooch, patch, tabard, or apron would serve just as well over more utilitarian (and therefor disposable) clothing.

wow this has gotten way off topic I am tempted to repost the actual question of whether or not people think the +2 hard points from the armor crafting rules stack with intuitive improvements +2 HP and/or the Intergal attachment +1 hp and a 1 hp mod?

but to address the silliness

1. Doing this costs less then 2k credits

2. Doing this takes less then 2 weeks (8 hours a day 5 days a week) and the materials are as common as can be.

3. Its happening before the game starts

4. The point is to have relatively effective armor. which will not draw attention undue attention on a core world where armor and weapons are rare.

5. Later on the players will LIKELY get better armor, but in social situations and places where heavier armor would not be permitted these suits will still get some use.

wow this has gotten way off topic I am tempted to repost the actual question of whether or not people think the +2 hard points from the armor crafting rules stack with intuitive improvements +2 HP and/or the Intergal attachment +1 hp and a 1 hp mod?

but to address the silliness

1. Doing this costs less then 2k credits

2. Doing this takes less then 2 weeks (8 hours a day 5 days a week) and the materials are as common as can be.

3. Its happening before the game starts

4. The point is to have relatively effective armor. which will not draw attention undue attention on a core world where armor and weapons are rare.

5. Later on the players will LIKELY get better armor, but in social situations and places where heavier armor would not be permitted these suits will still get some use.

This system tends to not allow stacking like that.

wow this has gotten way off topic I am tempted to repost the actual question of whether or not people think the +2 hard points from the armor crafting rules stack with intuitive improvements +2 HP and/or the Intergal attachment +1 hp and a 1 hp mod?

but to address the silliness

1. Doing this costs less then 2k credits

2. Doing this takes less then 2 weeks (8 hours a day 5 days a week) and the materials are as common as can be.

3. Its happening before the game starts

4. The point is to have relatively effective armor. which will not draw attention undue attention on a core world where armor and weapons are rare.

5. Later on the players will LIKELY get better armor, but in social situations and places where heavier armor would not be permitted these suits will still get some use.

Do these 3 things stack? Probably, not sure what you need them all for, those mods aren't cheap, but sure.

But 4 Force Pips is a lot to get on this task for a starting character, is this a high starting xp game? To have the Intuitive Improvements talent, a high Intelect, not to mention the limit of 2 skill ranks at character creation. It's a tall order even for a Knight Level PC, and even they are limited to 3 skill ranks.

What your talking about doing at character creation is usually a goal for a PC to achieve after a load of adventuring. It's absolutely possible, but where to from here? Anyone who can roll 2 Triumph and 11 Advantage is a master at that task already.

What a lot of the posts here have been is a reaction to someone rocking the boat. Highly focused characters are generally rare because this isn't D&D where "someone else will always do that for me" works all that well.

Is it all mathematically possible? Yeah absolutely, but if the result is a foregone conclusion then why even bother rolling in the first place, just assume it's done and move on with the actual story telling.

>all 71 checks took exactly 1 hour each.

It makes me wonder why you bothered to be honest. At that point you'd be better off just using GM fiat to make up some overpowered armour to give them.

You know it's munchkiny, we know it's munchkiny, and we've told you so.

Every so often someone new comes in with something over-the-top overpowered, we tell them so, then they get snippy.

It's your game and nothing we say will have an effect. If you feel the need for others to have to validate it, then it's probably overpowered.

The stats were int 4 mechanics 5 specialst tool mechanics maxed for +1 success/advantage and upgrading the check. 1 rank in inventor, right tools for the job with mental tools, and an assistant.

For a starting character? I mean, at that point, why even bother with rolls? You're playing 'Edge of the Spreadsheet' at this point.

There's a LOT in this game that is easy to min-max, because the game assumes a kind of 'gentleman's agreement' stance that you won't indulge in these shenanigans. There's nothing wrong with 'Jury Rigged', by itself. But when you start combining it with other stuff, when you adopt a Pathfinder style attitude of scouring every sourcebook to find the most broken combination, then naturally the game is going to fall apart.

The crafting rules are a great addition to the game... if you use them as they were meant to be used, and let the dice fall where they may. One of my players said the other day that when the ship creation rules come out, people will just use them to create a Sil 4 Star Destroyer. Thematically, tech in Star Wars is clunky and prone to malfunctioning anyway, so I feel that this whole approach rather misses the point.

Even then, you'll have to start ramping up the difficulty to challenge the players, or everything's going to feel too easy. But if that's the game you want to play, just do it and don't sweat it.

wow this has gotten way off topic I am tempted to repost the actual question of whether or not people think the +2 hard points from the armor crafting rules stack with intuitive improvements +2 HP and/or the Intergal attachment +1 hp and a 1 hp mod?

but to address the silliness

1. Doing this costs less then 2k credits

2. Doing this takes less then 2 weeks (8 hours a day 5 days a week) and the materials are as common as can be.

3. Its happening before the game starts

4. The point is to have relatively effective armor. which will not draw attention undue attention on a core world where armor and weapons are rare.

5. Later on the players will LIKELY get better armor, but in social situations and places where heavier armor would not be permitted these suits will still get some use.

I don't have a problem with giving better statted stuff than is in the books. I think the devs leave things a little lean to give GMs that room to maneuver in handing out rewards.

In particular I don't have a problem with a little beefy set of armor precisely because the system weights the game so much towards offense it would be easy to make that Soak and the armor in general irrelevant.

The issue I have is why on Earth would you want to sit there and just roll dice an hour to get a specific result. Just give it to them. At that point you're just rolling dice until you get the result you want so there is no point in rolling dice, you're taking the 'random' out of the equation.

I wouldn't allow a PC to find/buy/borrow/beg/or steal the resources needed to simply guarantee them they could produce what they want.

What you're proposing isn't role playing, it's simply applying a probability calculator to the dice until you get a 100% result.

Per the "Knight-Level Play" sidebar on p104 of the FaD CRB, that character is illegal (unless they're getting the final 2 ranks in the Mechanics skill from Cybernetics or in some similar fashion)...

Specifically, last sentence of the top-right paragraph: "Characters also may not train any skills above rank 3 while building their Knight-level PC."

All that said, I like the idea, it -is- munchkin-y, and I'd allow the stacking since the appearance is so distinctive they'd be burned the second they were recognized wearing it -- very similar to Batman's suit.

4. The point is to have relatively effective armor. which will not draw attention undue attention on a core world where armor and weapons are rare.

5. Later on the players will LIKELY get better armor, but in social situations and places where heavier armor would not be permitted these suits will still get some use.

I've already answered your other questions from my perspective, but I noticed something here I felt needed to be mentioned.

You seem to have mixed up Reinforced clothing with Armored clothing.

Armored clothing is specifically designed to be low profile, and has an associated bonus related to noticing it's armored.

Reinforced clothing is clothing with padding, plates and upgrade mounts riveted to it. So if you make something with 4 hard points and soak 2, it'll still look like something with 4 HP and soak 2.

It's of course ultimately the decision of your GM (or in your case, GMs) but I'd make sure that you all agree on this plan before deciding to commit.

I love the idea of fashionable and protective reinforced clothing as uniforms for the group. Because appropriately crafted clothing should be able to go anywhere with you and be completely acceptable as well as giving your group immediate recognition.

My question is would you in general allow the +2 hard points from the armor crafting rules stack with intuitive improvements to give armor 4 hard points. and does this stack with Intergal attachment +1 hp and a 1 hp mod?

I am leaning towards no on both but am curious what others think. Reinforced clothing with 5 hard points is maybe too much.

My current idea is to craft group uniforms of reinforced clothing with the goal of making suits at (2 triumph 11 advantage or 3 triumph 7 advantage) +1 defense +3 soak encumberance 1 (with a choice of bonus advantage in charm, coercion, negotiation, leadership, resilience, stealth) +2 hard points (1 filled with superior quality from intergal attachment) and 1 open from intuitive improvements.

If you are balking at these numbers keep in mind that I am assuming the template is complete and that the difficulty is simple. The crafter has crafted specialist tools which grant (1 success 1 advantage and 1 upgrade to the skill check) (and stacking practice makes perfect on the rolls that don't generate 2 triumph) Obviously the higher your int and mechanics are the better shot you have at this not taking an eternity.

If you guys think every hard point thing can stack then a lot of people in the star wars universe would probably pick crafted reinforced clothing with defense 1 soak 3 enc 1 and 4 open hard points even over off the shelves battle armor.

From a power perspective how badly does the team having these crafted uniforms break the game?

I don't think it really does. Plenty of storebought armor is pretty close to this maybe 1 soak off. The + advantage in one of the chosen skills is nice but not game breaking. (Yeah you are getting the armor for cheaper but this would benefit everyone equally and give the crafter a real sense of contribution to the team)

While this armor will be good its probably not end game for a lot of combat focused PC's who will probably want crafted armor to be worn over this as a good suit of crafted battle armor can have Defense 2 and Soak 4 with 4 extra hard points.

I can generate percentile tables for you if you like

elias does it take into account extra boosts from spending adv on failed rolls for the next attempt? If so wow that would have even been faster then using one of the online rolling programs I used. Still had to change the blues for each roll.

This game is based on knight level play plus 150xp to be spent evenly 75 on skills and 75 on talents/specs/force powers. With no cap on the bonus 150 xp for skills. The characters are very capable and meant to reflect the power of movie characters more then the standard characters in the system. They have are some of the few padawans/force sensatives who have actually survived the rise of the empire and are not typical starting characters. With 300 xp you can make a character who is very good at a few things or okay at a lot of things. I think the game will take them from 300xp to around 800 xp over the course of a year.

The armor template used is based on heavy clothing not armored clothing. "Heavy clothing is just that sturdy well made articles of clothing" Its base stats are 1 soak and 1 encumberance and 0 hard points. As to the person who thinks you can see soak, I doubt you could tell the difference between a kevlar weave trenchcoat and a regular one and that is the point. "The point is that the heavy clothing is not distinctive at all it just looks like normal clothes of whatever manner the player chooses to draw them in with marking of the mining company they work for on it.

As to 2p51's question I did it out of curiosity I could have assigned a number but I was bored and figured I'd see how many rolls it would take the first one came on roll 3 and I was like hmm maybe this will be easier then I thought. The next one didn't come till 34.

As far as resource availability its a rarity 0 item. I let players get as much rarity 0 and 1 as they can afford. I start making them roll at rarity 2. But that is personal preference.

I think I am going to go with the general consensus that the hard point types do not stack and leave them at that.

To give you an idea of my playstyle time matters when it matters and when it doesn't its a fade to black and fast forward to the next bit. That's where healing, crafting, shopping, selling and routine information gathering happen. I routinely will have the players wait for a day for a contact to get back to them with information. Or burn a week traveling in hyperspace. I don't focus the game or waste a lot of time on those sections but they do happen.

So the idea of spending 2 weeks doing something while hoping from ship to ship getting to a planet will not take up the campaign it will be covered in a few moments. Althought the dice rolling will be taken care of outside of the play session so as not to delay the story.

The armor template used is based on heavy clothing not armored clothing. "Heavy clothing is just that sturdy well made articles of clothing" Its base stats are 1 soak and 1 encumberance and 0 hard points. As to the person who thinks you can see soak, I doubt you could tell the difference between a kevlar weave trenchcoat and a regular one and that is the point. "The point is that the heavy clothing is not distinctive at all it just looks like normal clothes of whatever manner the player chooses to draw them in with marking of the mining company they work for on it.

It's stats are based on heavy clothing, but it's not actually heavy clothing. For reference look at the crafting rules in Special Mods and you'll see the same thing, an energy pistol is based on a blaster pistol, but it's not automatically a blaster pistol anymore than a zip gun is an X-caliber. It's all worded differently to note that they are not necessarily the same thing. That's the kind of little detail that can bork you.

As I said before though, it's not my opinion that matters, it's your GM's and group. In your case you've actually got it tougher because since it's round robin GMing, you have to get the entire group of GMs on board, not just one GM. So... quit trying to get these forums on your side and go talk to the actual people you're playing with. At the end of the day it's their opinion that matters because it's them that are going to be making the rulings on things. If they have a video game attitude and feel that pushing the system to the edge and walking around in a set of universal ubergear is how the game should be played, you're golden. If they want a game that's more about adaptation and improvisation, then they'll probably tell you to knock it off and go buy banal clothing for when you want to blend in, battle armor for when you want to fight, and armored clothing for when you can't make up your mind.

Ghost you gotta understand each player is adding a thing that will give an edge to the players on the specific mission they planned. This includes the armor that looks like clothing. The legitimate connection to the mining company, from the social character, the weapons cache that was sent seperately and air dropped by some rebels, and the hovercraft rental from the mining company that was setup by the pilot character. As for the look of the armor check keeping the peace page 90 section on templates (It can literally look like whatever you want).

While defense 1 soak 3 armor with 1 hp free is not bad and gets everyones soak to 5 or 6. Believe me when I say there are much better armors out there, but to start its not bad and will have some use later. Crafted battle armor is amazing for a fight with up to 6HP and Defense 2 and soak 4, yeah its pretty sweet.

The crafted heavy clothing is really not uber armor. Each character could easily get the same mechanical starts with superior modded battle armor and get a much better modable suit, but that doesn't fit the story of a bunch of force sensatives trying to uncover the mysteries of the force and keeping off imperial radar.

Yes it does account for spending advatages and extra triumphs (extra after schematic has reduced the difficulty to simple) to get boots. BTW spending triumphs to get boosts is more advantageous than to spend it to upgrade green to yellow on the next check (unless you only have 1 or 2 yellow and you absolutely need 2 triumphs)

The whole notion of just rolling dice with an endless supply of resources is just not Star Wars imo. You've got a rebellion running around scraping to get by hiding under glaciers and such, an underworld that rules whole tracts of the galaxy, and a uber tyrannical regime with its boot on everyone's throats. To say nothing of the fact of bagoodles of freelancers with the exact same ideas and equipment needs. The concept that a group a of a few folks being able to access an inexhaustible supply of materials to get the 100% solution to a crafting need is just way too divested from the narrative for my tastes. To then point out something like a rarity ranking number on a chart just kills the dream and rpg mood even more imo.