Hello,

My group just ran their first adventure after the beginner game and a few things showed up that we didn't think about during character creation, or in general. I was the GM for both so I figured I'd ask.

I) We want to have a star-ship campaign, so a few of the characters have no personal scale battle ability. But one character has the Sabotage duty, and my first idea was having them fulfill this duty through missions inside facilities and other star-ships. This leads to the problem, how do I integrate space-based characters into "ground" missions?

If it helps the PC specializations are: Solider-Medic, Engineer-Mechanic, and we'll have two of the following: Commander-Commodore, Ace-Pilot, Engineer-Saboteur.

II) Our starting ship is going to be a Gozanti-class (with the TIE ports as seen in SW Rebels), so two problems showed up here, our Pilot might switch to fighters, so who is going to fly the ship? with -3 handling even the star-fighter ace from the core book wouldn't do too well. This leads to the second problem, how to round out the crew. My first thought was minion NPC's, use the star-fighter pilot stats and call them alliance gunners. But I'm concerned that it will make the ship under-powered if it doesn't have support from capital ships. It also seems to lack the subtle differences that would exist in a ships crew. This lead to me thinking about creating the crew as if they were PC's, allowing for more variety in the stats, my question here is, should they be converted after this into rival like characters with no strain, or should they be able gain XP (at a much lower rate than PC's) and thus become better at what ever it is they do on the ship?

Thanks for the help, and for the Rebellion!

Well, one thing to keep in mind is that rolling two green dice at a problem is considered galactic average, so anyone who's got the stats to be a good pilot or gunner is also a respectable shot and pretty sneaky, training or not.

Ground missions are often a lot more interesting if the characters aren't super tough in combat. If your PCs are in command of a ship they should also be able to make leadership checks to command troops into battle. A Gozanti can easily carry a squad of stormtroopers. (Simply assume that instead of convincing them to fight with leadership the rolls are there to determine how many of them were ordered into effective positions if it's your own troops)

Sabotage isn't just sneaking around and planting bombs or mechanically tampering with things. It's the act of hurting the enemy by clandestinely disrupting his ability to make war. Destroying (or stealing) war materiel is a form of sabotsge, as is slicing the simulators at an Imperial academy and disrupting the morale of the recruits. For that matter, supplying tainted/poisoned food to a distant Imperial post is a form of sabotage too. Many of these can be accomplished with a stsrship-based group.

Sabotage could also be sneaking the ship in under a false code, and destroying all the docked ships, or fuel tanks, etc. And your players will round out their characters quickly when you show a non-ship based mission to them. One session's worth of XP picks up a couple skills or low level talents. And never underestimate the ingenuity of players in working a skill into an adventure in a way you can't predict. Or succeed where they certainly shouldn't.

I say this out of practicality: Go watch Star Wars Rebels season 1. What you find there is a mysterious hologram is telling the group where, when, and what to hit. They use a combination of their ship and ground attacks. Many of the episodes have the same general formula which is below.

In the end the result is your commodore and ace will stay on the ship, the rest will execute the plan, then have to be extracted.

To keep it interesting for all you can have the ship face problems while in space as the others suggest, a flight of Tie's arrive and the two PCs have to lie/charm/scare their way out of being questioned too much by the opposing force. While in orbit they get picked up by the planet's governor and have to explain why they're there, there's a secondary objective of destroy a space dock/transport ship/some other cool thing.

Thanks for the replies! That is definitely something to think about , I have more ideas now. I didn't see a direct answer to my second question.

II) Our starting ship is going to be a Gozanti-class (with the TIE ports as seen in SW Rebels), so two problems showed up here, our Pilot might switch to fighters, so who is going to fly the ship? with -3 handling even the star-fighter ace from the core book wouldn't do too well. This leads to the second problem, how to round out the crew. My first thought was minion NPC's, use the star-fighter pilot stats and call them alliance gunners. But I'm concerned that it will make the ship under-powered if it doesn't have support from capital ships. It also seems to lack the subtle differences that would exist in a ships crew. This lead to me thinking about creating the crew as if they were PC's, allowing for more variety in the stats, my question here is, should they be converted after this into rival like characters with no strain, or should they be able gain XP (at a much lower rate than PC's) and thus become better at what ever it is they do on the ship?

Be careful with the Gozanti. Once you're flagged as an outlaw/Rebel, it's hard to make quick getaways in that tub. Sure, you can out-shoot most Silhouette 4 ships, but most other Silhouette 5+ ships mount turbolasers that outrange your weapons and are capable of penetrating Armor 5 with ease. It's not a bad ship, but it's not necessarily a good one for overt missions unless you're acting as a part of a fleet, and that's a rare role for the typically lone wolf PC-types.

Oddly enough, everything above also applies to the VCX-100...

I would recommend against creating additional crew as PCs. One of the great things about this system (IMO) is the streamlined stat blocks. Scaling that up to the complexity of a PC character sheet is going to slow everything down. I'd start the crew as minions, but give each one a name and personality. This will help the crew (and you) keep track of them. If Jaxor the gunner's mate (Minion) does a consistently good job shooting TIEs out of the sky, then maybe he gets upgraded to a Rival when the crew's Duty ticks over.

As HappyDaze and others mentioned, there's more to sabotage than planting explosives in the stormtroopers latrine. Shipjacking is a great, tense, and characterful mission, and still performs the asset denial role - plus it allows you to blend off-ship missions with cockpit time. Sowing mines, towing asteroids into hyperlanes, and privateer missions are all things that could fit into the sabotage category as well.

How many fighters do you need to carry on the ship for your campaign?

If it's 2 or 3 you could get give them a consular cruiser with the hangar bay attachment. It has better stats and better weapons than the Gozanti and enough HP to allow an hangar bay and some other mods.Also a small enough crew to be feasible in a lone wold campaign. If you need more fighters give them a marauder corvette and go to full privateer role. This way you can have bigger space battles but also have to make them part of a crew.

The gozanti is still a decent ship if you want to only prey on freighters but you absolutely have to run from corvettes and anything bigger. Look at rebels the imperials use it to interdict freighter operations and hunt lone freighters, but they quickly call reinforcements if anything bigger shows up.

If you want to do Rebel fleet engagements rather than a privateer, go for bigger ships, from corellian corvettes upwards. Gozanti are not made for high conflicts areas

Gozanti are not made for high conflicts areas

Well, they are made for high-confict areas, but as transports, not warships. When pressed to act in combat they have no business going it alone and can only contribute to multi-ship actions as a semi-effective anti-fighter vessel. Of course, you could put turbolasers on it, but it's now illegal and unable to evade pursuers, so that's not a great option. It really all goes back to what role are your PCs playing for the Rebellion. A Gozanti should land them a slot with Support Services ferrying supplies for the Rebellion.

So I have a recommendation for the ground part in two parts.

The first is that the ground battle happen in space. You are using a Gonzanti which is an Imperial vessel and you could easily use subterfuge to get it close to another vessel and board it to sabotage or even steal. This would give your crew ground battle in a star ship environment. I am sure this is something you considered though.

The second part is try trading up in scale if you can. By this i mean have your team lead a ground expedition where they recruit a populace to man a starship on behalf of the rebellion. This would probably require very little in the way of normal blaster fire combat but would allow your characters to shine in their specialties. The medic aiding those sick, the engineer repairing or helping to maintain systems for the city, the commodore making speeches, the saboteur showing the populace how to defend themselves through indirect means, and the Pilot showing off. A big part of the Rebellion isn't just material resources it also people as well. If your group is going to be a rebel cell they need a support structure and have recruited their own support group is a good way to a) introduce memorable npc's and b) fill out the ranks of what your group thinks it needs and having some people on the periphery to fill in the holes they don't see coming. So I would make a part of the campaign of looking at a big new starship and then work on the means to steal it right out from under the Empire using the help of your support staff.

Another suggestion I have is that you simply give your players one of the scariest ships in my opinion (though there are those on here that will disagree due to better familiarity with the system) and that is the Skipray Blastboat. This is a heavily armed ship that can easily hold the crew for their missions. The Gonzanti can be the base of operations but they launch their missions in the Blastboat.

Just some suggestions good luck with your campaign.

Note that the Skipray is Silhouette 4, and so could not be launched from a Silhouette 5 Gozanti — they’re too close in size. You’d need a Silhouette 6 ship to carry around a Skipray.

On the Gozanti we had as the main ship for the “Emerald Rancor” game, we had a HWK-290 as our main armed attack/boarding craft that we carried in a modified hangar bay. IMO, the HWK-290 is one of the best Silhouette 3 ships you can use for that kind of function.

#1) Ground missions.

Part of the issue is a tendency to think in a d20 format. That is.... "I have to power up my characters so I can beat the boss." "The more powerful I get, the bigger opponents I can take out." "The more powerful they are, the more Experience Points I get."

D20 gaming is always about being powerful enough with great stats and superior items. It's also about statting-up an enemy until it's tough enough for the player group to defeat.

In SW FFG, it's about story and accomplishment. Look at the stat blocks of a Moff. Not too impressive, eh? No matter HOW much you stat someone up, it is ALWAYS 'two purple' to hit in melee and usually 'one purple' to hit in short ranged combat. The point is that 2-die Agility/Brawn characters roll pretty well and there's no need to avoid a 'ground game'. So they'll never be able to hit a guy with a 7 soak and Adversary 3. So what? You plan on defeating Vader someday?

In d20-style, you'd come up with four minion groups of four each to challenge the beefed up PC group. In d20 style, when four go down, four more step up in true hack-n-slash style. Problem with d20 style is that FFG PC's likely go down in two good hits. Toe minion groups of two-each will suffice. Four Stormtroopers guarding or chasing something is reasonable and doesn't mean you've dumbed down the adventure to make it easier.

I get inspiration from IV. Luke & Leia were novices, RPG-wise. They did alright with stealthing, swinging, and shooting. Run any ground mission you want to. Don't fall prey to 'my group isn't good at that' stuff. Two Green vs Two Purple is still a 45% success rate. Let them use stealth, cunning, negotiate, etc... around average folk in cities, and such. It's fun! Success is so much more valued when you make a difficult roll.

One key to those 'ground game' adventures, is to always make two ways out. You set it up to be (let's say) a Negotiation check to get parts for the ship on the black market avoiding Imperial notice. You have a plan for a failed check and a plan for a made check. Don't paint yourself into a corner where the adventure depends on one roll succeeding.

#2) I agree with the others about trying a different ship. I saw where one guy bought droid gunners, and such.

Thanks for all the advice, it was very helpful. I'll definitely consider giving them a new ship when it makes sense to do so. Until then I'll tone down the space battles when its just their ship.