Hello everyone! Last night our group had a battle against a Zakkeg, during which my Jedi Guardian took one wound. Total. Now, there were other factors at play that caused the GM to wonder how to scale the party to fit to our group's level of prowess in battle. We're thinking EXP limits, cost increases on talents/skills/trees, a talent tree cap, etc.

So basically, in the interest of seeing what you come up with, I have my character sheet here. Forgive the talents lacking descriptions, but I know most people can find them easily or know what they do. Our campaign has been running for a year now, with one session every week (more or less, we've done a couple of other campaigns in between - some starfighter stuff for instance).

Background on Carrus: he started out as a bit of a bard, charming where he could, drinking and chatting more than fighting. His first few fights he got knocked out a lot, missed a lot and was otherwise kinda hopeless! It wasn't until he embraced his Jedi roots once again that he became a force to be reckoned with (geddit?!), but as you can see he doesn't use external force powers, only ones that enhance him or his body. No Push, Heal, Unleash etc.

Also of note is the lightsaber has 2x Superior - a GM gift that I didn't ask for, but was kind of him to grant. I haven't moved the Unique Lorrdian Gemstone file over, so for some reason it shows an Xciter, but the stuff on the front page is correct.

Second note is the sword named Chiratsuki was another GM gift I did not ask for - I had crafted a standard vibrosword using the rules in Special Mods after we found the legendary sword smith, Hanzori Hatto (yes, you read that right, he was awesome). Again, not unhappy with it. It's more or less Callandor from WoT, and has the effect that if I use Imbue Item on it, it glows brightly and also doubles my remaining Force Rating.

Clarification on the battle last night - I moved to be behind the Zakkeg, and used both sword and saber in my first ever dual-wielding, taking the worst of both stats to use them. As a group, we managed to cripple its maneuvers, which stopped it from using a lot of its moves. The irony of the attacking was as soon as went back to using just one weapon, I missed, because dice rolls.

But that's more or less moot. I want to know what you'd do to beat me. I know how I'd beat me, and how I'd try to stop myself from being beaten. I will reply with what I would use to counter things that come up, or rather what I have used for things that we've seen already.

Carrus Avinn - Corellian Human, Jedi Guardian - Soresu Defender, Protector, Armorer and recently Ataru Striker (which I have not and will not use the special moves from until another Ataru user teaches him - if that happens):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bymeg_NKhsv-MzhMWWFXczgyUHc/view?usp=sharing

Enjoy. Also, any campaign questions, feel free to ask.

NG, I know you're reading this!

EDIT: Please also ignore the Encumberance value, I don't think I've updated that for a while. Also, yes, he has 20 comms. Well, the crew divided them up. Burner comms. So handy!

EDIT 2: I know why the Encum. is so high. I have the Corellian Comp. Bow/Explosives equipped for ease of damage reference. That's the extra 3.

Ok, first question is how many other PC's have obligation and is the total of all of them over 100? If so then no one can spend XP until you bring it down.

Now how does a GM challenge your group?

Large Minion Groups (15-20 Stormtroopers) their dice pool will be something like AAPPP until you reduce their number below 6.

Split the party, 4 things MUSTbe done at the same time, suddenly your all challenged with roadblocks that would normally be handled by one of the other PC's who is the expert in that area.

Vehicle opponents when your only resources are personal scale

Crazy powerful Nemesis with LOTSof backup.

Your character in particular has very limited ways of recovering strain, so for you I would target that.

Condensed timeframes, instead of having 2 or 3 encounters before a hyperspace jump or a night of rest, have 8-10 gradually the strain thresholds will be reached, there is no simple repetitive way of recovering strain, so instead of triggering a weapon quality your now forced to recover strain. Taking that second manoeuvre is expensive.

There will be more

Great start mate!

To answer: we have hard large minion groups galore, and many amazing nemesis battles. Specifically four that I can think of that we almost died on (in one case a character did die).

Party actually splits semi-often. Of our own volition haha! It has led to dangerous times.

Vehicles have come in, but we have a YT-2400 that keeps getting lucky - though it's called The Lost Cause. We love her, really. On foot there was one fight with speeder tanks that were pretty brutal, but we had NPCs helping at the time (all out gang war on Nar Shaddaa).

Crazy powerful nemesis mentioned above. Lost an arm to one, another player lost a full character to another. We've won by, in one case, literal skin of teeth margins.

You hit the nail on the head with strain. If not for advantages to recover he can fall over in a couple of turns.

The frenetic battles is also great, and we have had that. There was a two day thing where we got next to no downtime, and added exhaustion dice as well. Quick draw and recently acquired Enhance: Speed section helps with moving around. The economy comes down to: Would parry/reflect cost less overall? Can I get a counter attack with it? and does this risk the other party members?

As you can imagine/see, Carrus tries his best to protect others.

Just one question: How did you get 135 starting XP?

Ion the cybernetic arm(s) to start with, to make them/it useless.

I would defintiely let NPCs have cortosis quality, at least for Rivals and Nemeses.

I would attack him using large minion groups (at least 10 members per group.) These could easily have the cortosis quality on their armours - at this threat level your group easily warrants overkill moves from the GM. So at least a group or two with cortosis quality on their armour can turn out pretty devastating.

Also, let one or more NPC force users have Suppress - including the mastery bit to remove committed force dice, as well as messing with your force power checks.

Protect/unleash is always fun - or Bind. These should have most if not all upgrades, and be cheaper to activate than for players (as is the way force sensitive adversaries are often presented in the stat blocks).

Let Rivals and Nemeses use parry, let them have many ranks - equal to the max in the group.

Play around with having 3, 4 and/or 5 ranks in the Adversary talents for badasses. Apply adversary 1-2 to minion groups sent hunting for the PCs.

Let NPCs have good defence, and/or being surrounded by squads (see AoR GM kit I believe), aka ablative armour, so you hit their goons instead.

Have enough NPCs so the group is forced to split.

Add in moral choices, forcing you guys to prioritise between several things, too many things, all of which must be done (clearly impossible, unless you guys are clever [or the GM forgiving]). Require specific PCs for specific tasks, playing on the players' and the characters' weaknesses (both actual and in-game).

Never stop the chase, don't let the players rest. Ever. Let the enemy be waiting for them, in ambushes. Constantly. Use dark side vergences.

Drug/poison the characters - drugs are more fun though, for instance: Booster blue is fun, sure it gives you a boost, but you can't roll to regain strain after encounters for the rest of the session ... Also, it can lead to addiction.

All brilliant ideas!

Oggdude's generator for the EXP. Morality, Duty, Obli. If I've mucked up, lemme know! I can redact the latest purchase (+1 Agi dedication) until such time as I've earned correct points - no sweat!

We have fought creative Force users, and I had suggested increased Adversary with a sort of "wound off" effect, like as the HP drops it loses a rank at 75%, 50% etc down to a minimum of 2/3 whatever.

Carrus also didn't get a replacement arm for something like 8 sessions. Learned to do ok with one arm! He was also presumed dead after he lost it (to the Empire at least) but with a recent event they may know he survived.

Nemesis of course carry Parry/Reflect where applicable. And we've had a Force user who took out two characters (early days Carrus was one) in a single round with Unleash. Also the second time we fought him he wrecked the other tank (who is even more brutal at dishing out damage with his fists) down to next to no HP in one round with Force Lightning too. That was a shocker. Pun possibly intended.

Also morality is my fave. If someone told Carrus he has to stop fighting or innocents die etc. he'd drop his weapons on the spot.

That's a bit more of a narrative way out though, not game mechanics.

Also, Nemesis Combat Option ... allowing a nemesis to have two initiative slots per round (first introduced in Shadow of/Under a Black Sun, later appeared in EotE GM kit I believe.) It's a good way of handling showdowns between many players and fewer NPCs. I use that sometimes, it can be quite upsetting for the players at times (not that my players complain a lot).

Give NPCs high initiative characteristics. It always helps to act first

That is a really top notch idea, Jeg.

Also lol mouthy OOC I've been wanting to build a Halo style MAC to carry round the galaxy by the YT and leave it in orbit for the big old middle finger attack one time.

A character should only ever benefit from a single option at character creation. They must pick one of the Morality/Duty/Obligation to use. The other 2 can be part of the character but will not effect how much XP or Money the character has to spend.

If your whole group did it then probably don't change anything now, but next characters keep it in mind. It's probably resulted in higher Characteristics than normal.

I mucked up at character creation as I completely missed the limit on stats at the time, but reset it since, having the " 4 3s" as it is known for humans and some other races starting out.

Sil 2 vehicle with a planetary scale weapon, even a light blaster cannon, will waste pretty much any character without an Armor rating of 6+ (Armor, not Soak) in a single hit. You might Reflect 10 damage, and your soak might take off another 10, and you might have enough Wound Threshold to take 20 points of damage, but since we're talking about a weapon that does at least 50 personal scale damage on any hit, even a Jedi is a scorch mark.

I kill you in a drive by with a vehicle weapon. One shot should to sufficient. ;-)

I get you out of your comfort zone and force you into vehicle combat in general. Obi Wan was shot down for reason nearly every time we see him in a fighter.

I can easily overwhelm your defense with auto-fire with stun settings from a few minion groups. Damned if you use reflect and damned if you don't.

Looking at your char-sheet … basically Avinn is a young Obi-Wan if you look at his combat stats, an Obi-Wan with an insanely powerful artefact in form of Chiratsuki, which by the way should attract the attention of several darksiders which are way outside of Carrus Avinn's league. The system is pretty consistent which things which can kill a jedi knight, basically everything which is shown to give trouble to jedis works as well in FaD. Strain is not an infinite resource, overcoming reflect with pure numbers is easy, sniper are still dangerous, vehicle weapons are dangerous when used by competent people, explosives or simply sending a better duellist still work. And star fighter combat is absolutely deadly, especially for people without a starfighter spec.

Besides, speaking of Zakkeg,we killed two or three in the AoR beginners game campaign on Dxun, iirc they did zero damage to our group too. Beginners game and all. I have not checked the stats of them, but it does sound not as impressive … though I had initial so much respect for them that my ace character insist on staying in the lambda shuttle … turned out that even the big mother Zakkeg can only take one shot from lambda guns.

Sil 2 vehicle with a planetary scale weapon, even a light blaster cannon, will waste pretty much any character without an Armor rating of 6+ (Armor, not Soak) in a single hit. You might Reflect 10 damage, and your soak might take off another 10, and you might have enough Wound Threshold to take 20 points of damage, but since we're talking about a weapon that does at least 50 personal scale damage on any hit, even a Jedi is a scorch mark.

With the new canon having lightsabers reflect vehicle damage all the time … I would be tempted to allow a character with reflect to use it against planetary scale weapons with full effectiveness, so in this case reducing damage by 7 before the 10x multiplication happens. Though even with that house rule his Carrus Avinn might go down in one hit, depending on the attack roll. And if you bring torpedos or concussion missiles …nasty.

Speaking of nasty, disrupters are nasty too and i think a sniper could get Avinn with a reasonable chance out of an ambush (Carrus has issues with initiative, one of his weak points). Reflect absorbs only 7 out of the 15 base damage (Verpine shatter gun) and pierce 6 means that 7 damage are left, add 5 from target blow and maybe another 5 from deadly accuracy and another 3 or so from anatomy lessons, apply crippling blow to bleed strain for the rest of the encounter, on top of those 21+ damage comes then most likely a crit with a w100 roll +50 on the most likely happening crit. Avinn ain't dead yet, but it sure would be a rough start against this bounty hunter: assassin / sharpshooter combination …

… but hey, could be worse, some marauder with a big axe and customized cortis armor would be already trouble too. If you get to soak values of 13 or up and make those immune to breach, most of the offensive power of the jedi seems to vanish, strain becomes again an issue as parry still consumes strain and crits would be for both combatants the most dangerous thing.

Loving all the of the replies!

Two points of note: the Zakkeg was juiced up a lot. The GM had realized the basic version wasn't that hot and needed some love in order to be a challenge.

And initiative wise, don't forget to add the 3 Force Dice from Foresee. He had visions of some stuff a while ago, the GM using a triumph to make him see other Jedi in danger, so he began unlocking the Foresee path a little.

Ideally I'd like to get the one that allows allies a boost to defences, as we've got one glass cannon who would benefit from it.

Sil 2 vehicle with a planetary scale weapon, even a light blaster cannon, will waste pretty much any character without an Armor rating of 6+ (Armor, not Soak) in a single hit. You might Reflect 10 damage, and your soak might take off another 10, and you might have enough Wound Threshold to take 20 points of damage, but since we're talking about a weapon that does at least 50 personal scale damage on any hit, even a Jedi is a scorch mark.

With the new canon having lightsabers reflect vehicle damage all the time … I would be tempted to allow a character with reflect to use it against planetary scale weapons with full effectiveness, so in this case reducing damage by 7 before the 10x multiplication happens. Though even with that house rule his Carrus Avinn might go down in one hit, depending on the attack roll. And if you bring torpedos or concussion missiles …nasty.

Speaking of nasty, disrupters are nasty too and i think a sniper could get Avinn with a reasonable chance out of an ambush (Carrus has issues with initiative, one of his weak points). Reflect absorbs only 7 out of the 15 base damage (Verpine shatter gun) and pierce 6 means that 7 damage are left, add 5 from target blow and maybe another 5 from deadly accuracy and another 3 or so from anatomy lessons, apply crippling blow to bleed strain for the rest of the encounter, on top of those 20 damage comes then most likely a crit with a w100 roll +50 on the most likely happening crit. Avinn ain't dead yet, but it sure would be a rough start against this bounty hunter: assassin / sharpshooter combination …

… but hey, could be worse, some marauder with a big axe and customized cortis armor would be already trouble too. If you get to soak values of 13 or up and make those immune to breach, most of the offensive power of the jedi seems to vanish, strain becomes again an issue as parry still consumes strain and crits would be for both combatants the most dangerous thing.

Certainly maybe house-rule territory, but I've always made disruptors unreflectable; the energy output, and instability of the effect, would overwhelm a lightsaber. It's only ever come up twice, as NPCs, in games I've run, don't usually carry one. One, it was established, beforehand, that they couldn't, and once, the attempt was tried, "succeeded" (took no damage), and then the lightsaber was shorted out, sort of like a bad cortosis interaction, and needed maintenance to be used again. Said character certainly found other ways to defeat this foe, and so no one died as a result of it. Ion weapons get similar treatment. In old fluff, Luke couldn't deflect ion weapons with his lightsaber, unless he calibrated it to, and then couldn't deflect laser/blaster shots, until he calibrated it back. Back then, Ssi-ruuk paddle beamers were ion weapons, and ion weapons overwhelmed people, "frying" their nervous system, temporarily, in much the same way a droid is, and that's how Ssi-ruuk caught people alive, to entech them. The rules have obviously changed, as has the canon, since, but I still stick to them. I'd have to look them up in this edition, but I favor older fluff, when I can. Your mileage may vary.

Apart from the obvious planetary weapons (that would waste anyone not super hard to hit), at a first glance I can see your discipline is pretty low and you have no Supress power. That leaves you open to pretty nasty force powers, like Bind or Influence, that will take you out of the fight pretty easy if targeted by a high discipline enemy. Also if you get shot by enemies with autofire and decent rolls, you might get out of strain fast.

Auto fire is always a terrifying prospect when fighting. Especially because of the long ranges it can be shot from. One of our group auto fires to great effect sometimes and takes out scads of enemies in a turn.

The only thing I can hope for on the auto fire rolls is an outright miss so I can reflect the damage back.

Misdirect pretty much clears the board.

Seperate out the party use Misdirect to make the rest of the party look like enemies then

watch Carrus go to town on his own party...

Auto fire is always a terrifying prospect when fighting. Especially because of the long ranges it can be shot from. One of our group auto fires to great effect sometimes and takes out scads of enemies in a turn.

The only thing I can hope for on the auto fire rolls is an outright miss so I can reflect the damage back.

Um, Improved Reflect requires a hit with Threat or Despair. A miss is just a bonus

The best way to deal with Autofire is despair in melee...

Auto fire is always a terrifying prospect when fighting. Especially because of the long ranges it can be shot from. One of our group auto fires to great effect sometimes and takes out scads of enemies in a turn.

The only thing I can hope for on the auto fire rolls is an outright miss so I can reflect the damage back.

Um, Improved Reflect requires a hit with Threat or Despair. A miss is just a bonus

I know. But usually (or at least maybe in my luck's case) when it misses, it misses big, and gets 3+ threats or despairs. Rolling against sometimes 3 red and 3+ black is hard.

No no. You can only use Reflect when your Hit. You can only use Improved Reflect when you use Reflect. Therefore your opponent MUST hit with their attack roll for you to be able to send it back at them.

If they miss you are unable to use the Threat or Despair to trigger Improved Reflect.

Oh well this changes a few things!

That means the Inquisitors we fought also did wrong by the rules. Bugger.

the lightsaber has 2x Superior

Unique Lorrdian Gemstone

doubles my remaining Force Rating

I think I can see the problem.

Hey, it's your game, but if your GM is giving out crazily-overpowered non-standard artefacts, these are the kind of issues you're going to run into.

There are plenty of powerful things in the rules as is, but when you start with double Superior and double Force rating things are going to escalate out of hand quickly.

Sure, everyone can do what they want at their own table, but if someone wants to use cheat codes, there's no point then complaining that the game is too easy.

the lightsaber has 2x Superior

Unique Lorrdian Gemstone

doubles my remaining Force Rating

I think I can see the problem.

Hey, it's your game, but if your GM is giving out crazily-overpowered non-standard artefacts, these are the kind of issues you're going to run into.

There are plenty of powerful things in the rules as is, but when you start with double Superior and double Force rating things are going to escalate out of hand quickly.

Sure, everyone can do what they want at their own table, but if someone wants to use cheat codes, there's no point then complaining that the game is too easy.

That's why I like to use my Heavy Blaster Pistol and Bow, especially in public (what with the whole "Hey, that guy is a Jedi! Someone call the Empire!" and whatnot.

But yes, and I need to stress again - I followed the rules for building a standard Vibrosword (note - Jetstream Sam art) and I was given Callandor. And the Lorrdian Gemstone was the same deal - given and not asked for.

I just really love my group and don't want to see anyone having a lame time. I already offered to retire Carrus (off to train Ysana and others) or ditch the equipment for sake of not getting that stuff.

The other issue is the Bounty Hunter with a Medium Range, 8 damage, Breach laser bow (same GM, gifts again). And the Strike Laser Claws on the Ssi-Ruk that on average belt out 20 damage. Basically I agree that we may have an equipment issue. All stemming from the dude with the largest issue with the difficulty curve on fights Irony and whatnot!