Hello, I have a shield that grants Defensive 4, with an armor that has Defenses 3 and Armor Master (Imp) for another 1 point. In total this should be 8 defense in total, right?

The correct answer is officially unknown, with contradicting and conflicting answers over the past couple of years from the developers. But here is the common agreement in how its intended to work:

1. You choose the highest source of Defence for Melee and Ranged defence, in this case your Shield, it could be a Weapon (possibly from Defensive Training), Armour, Item, or Cover. ("the character gains Defence X)
2. Modifications to equipment only effects the Defence of that item ("Increase the defence of item A by +Y)
3. Any Talents then effect your total defence gained from that single source. ("Increase the characters total Defence by +Z")

So in your case the Defence would be 5 and your Armor has no contribution to the outcome. but that Shield needs to be in your hands to have any effect, and it wont always be there. So when your shield is on your back or in the ship your defence is instead 4.

Going behind cover does nothing for you either, as that "grants Defence 1"

Hello, I have a shield that grants Defensive 4, with an armor that has Defenses 3 and Armor Master (Imp) for another 1 point. In total this should be 8 defense in total, right?

Hello Munchkin!

No shield in any of the books grant Defensive 4... tops i've seen is Defensive 2.

Same for Armors... max Defense from Armor is 2 and they cost 12000$ to the minimum.

By RAW, you are right about the 8 total defense.

But like Ghost said... the rules are mostly in limbo and up for changes after they reevaluate all those interactions.

So feel free to choose which ever rules suits your group the best.

Hello, I have a shield that grants Defensive 4, with an armor that has Defenses 3 and Armor Master (Imp) for another 1 point. In total this should be 8 defense in total, right?

Hello Munchkin!

No shield in any of the books grant Defensive 4... tops i've seen is Defensive 2.

Same for Armors... max Defense from Armor is 2 and they cost 12000$ to the minimum.

By RAW, you are right about the 8 total defense.

But like Ghost said... the rules are mostly in limbo and up for changes after they reevaluate all those interactions.

So feel free to choose which ever rules suits your group the best.

Probably a couple of Special Mods Specials.

Your Mileage May Vary but I've houseruled that the Setback from Cover stacks with Setback(s) from Ranged Defense.

Your Mileage May Vary but I've houseruled that the Setback from Cover stacks with Setback(s) from Ranged Defense.

As have I. It doesn't seem game-breaking, and I kinda like that most people dive for cover when shooting starts.

Your Mileage May Vary but I've houseruled that the Setback from Cover stacks with Setback(s) from Ranged Defense.

We just took the cap of 4 from the space combat part and applied to to personal scale as well, that way all sources of defense can stack up just fine, up the the value of 4.

It helps to not have to roll 8 setback dice

On 1/10/2017 at 5:52 PM, Richardbuxton said:

The correct answer is officially unknown, with contradicting and conflicting answers over the past couple of years from the developers. But here is the common agreement in how its intended to work:

1. You choose the highest source of Defence for Melee and Ranged defence, in this case your Shield, it could be a Weapon (possibly from Defensive Training), Armour, Item, or Cover. ("the character gains Defence X)
2. Modifications to equipment only effects the Defence of that item ("Increase the defence of item A by +Y)
3. Any Talents then effect your total defence gained from that single source. ("Increase the characters total Defence by +Z")

So in your case the Defence would be 5 and your Armor has no contribution to the outcome. but that Shield needs to be in your hands to have any effect, and it wont always be there. So when your shield is on your back or in the ship your defence is instead 4.

Going behind cover does nothing for you either, as that "grants Defence 1"

Defensive/Deflective mods use the "increase defense" language, not "grants defense".

On 1/10/2017 at 6:49 PM, Richardbuxton said:

Probably a couple of Special Mods Specials.

Yes, that's what I use. I'm the mechanic, so besides for repairing the ship I spend most of my time crafting because there's not a whole lot else to do. Even then crafting's limited mostly to combat items. But i wanted to do something more in the support role, rather than join the 3+ people in our group that dump everything into kill stuff.

17 minutes ago, Reshy said:

Defensive/Deflective mods use the "increase defense" language, not "grants defense".

Yes, that's what I use. I'm the mechanic, so besides for repairing the ship I spend most of my time crafting because there's not a whole lot else to do. Even then crafting's limited mostly to combat items. But i wanted to do something more in the support role, rather than join the 3+ people in our group that dump everything into kill stuff.

So here's the situation we have: the books don't offer much on defense, so questions arose. The official FAQ generally follows the logic that you pick a static defense value then increase it by X (armor, talents, weapons, whatever). A subsequent question to the developers was sent, with a equipment list that offers varying levels of defense, and asked what defense would be -- the answer was that you gain defense equal to whatever the highest single source would be (If you have a weapon with Defensive 3 and armor with defense 2, your melee defense is 3), contradicting the FAQ (sortaish). Another debate popped up over the "gain/increase" description, and two more subsequent defense questions were sent, one by myself. The resulting answer was that the defense rules were under revision and they couldn't answer the question.

And that's the last anyone's heard any word on it. That was several months ago, now. I don't actually remember when, and good luck finding the thread on it.

If your GM let's you throw that many dice, then have fun with it. All the NPC needs to do is pop threat/despair or a talent to negate all defense for a round. .... then you will be forced to listen to your GM's evil laugh as he rubs his hands together.

7 minutes ago, Blackbird888 said:

And that's the last anyone's heard any word on it. That was several months ago, now. I don't actually remember when, and good luck finding the thread on it.

Here is the thread from the Developer Answered Questions:

Stacking Defense

Question asked by Braendig :

3 Brawn

Sentinel: Shien Expert

1 Rank Defensive Training

Wearing Armored Robes

Wielding a Riot Shield (Left Hand) and a

Shoto Lightsaber with a fully Modified

Lorridian Gemstone and a

fully Modified Curved Hilt ? And why? How would the various defenses stack?"

Answered by Sam Stewart :

Ranged Defense 2

Melee Defense 3

The modified lightsaber would be the source of the defense, because it has the highest ranged and melee defenses. The shoto lightsaber has no innate defense, but the Llordian Gemstone comes with Defensive 1. Its mods allow you to increase the weapon’s defense. Same goes for the curved hilt, its mods also allow you to increase the weapon’s defense.

All of the other defensive sources are from different items, and do not stack

Honestly it's a bit clunky regardless and I wish it was more along the lines of armor/shields (physical and energy) providing just Soak, and environmental factors like smoke and darkness n such adding Setbacks. Hiding behind something solid but being visible should just be more Soak. Stuff in the way of even seeing the target should increase the chance of just flat out failing, like smoke and stealth stuff n such would cause.

And here is another Dev answered question on the topic (only to say "I can't say what the answer is right now")

Question asked by KommissarK :

( https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/108101-ffg-developer-answered-questions/page-8#entry2004999 )

The Defensive talent is worded as:

"Defensive (passive): Defensive weapons are particularly good at fending off incoming melee attacks. A character wielding a weapon with the Defensive quality increases his melee defense by the weapon’s Defensive rating."

The Deflection talent is similar, but for ranged defense. When it says it "increases his melee defense," how does this interact with a character?

I understand there can only be one source of a ranged/melee defense rating in effect, but this "increase" wording seems to indicate that it is there to work around the "one source" limitation.

If my character is wearing armored clothing (defense 1), and I am wielding a Defensive 1 weapon, does this mean that I have melee defense 2, ranged defense 1? Or, when it says "increases his melee defense" is that speaking specifically of the character, and as such its a choice between the -character's- melee defense of 1, or the armour's melee defense of one?

How does this work with dual wielding? If I have a weapon with Defensive 1 in one hand, and Deflection 2 in the other hand, do I have a total of ranged defense 2 and melee defense 1, or is it only one or the other (i.e. does a weapon need to be selected as the "primary")? How does this work if stacking the same quality and dual wielding? Defense 2 on both weapons. They're both "increasing" the same target melee defense value (either my armor or my character, as per above answers), so it doesn't seem to violate the multiple sources principle.

Or is the increasing terminology incorrect and the weapon with the deflection/defensive property actually just "gives" a ranged/melee defense rating.

Answered by Sam Stewart :

We are currently re-evaluating how personal scale defense works in the game, and may have a more comprehensive answer in the future. So at this point, we cannot answer your question.

2 minutes ago, Blackbird888 said:

So here's the situation we have: the books don't offer much on defense, so questions arose. The official FAQ generally follows the logic that you pick a static defense value then increase it by X (armor, talents, weapons, whatever). A subsequent question to the developers was sent, with a equipment list that offers varying levels of defense, and asked what defense would be -- the answer was that you gain defense equal to whatever the highest single source would be (If you have a weapon with Defensive 3 and armor with defense 2, your melee defense is 3), contradicting the FAQ (sortaish). Another debate popped up over the "gain/increase" description, and two more subsequent defense questions were sent, one by myself. The resulting answer was that the defense rules were under revision and they couldn't answer the question.

And that's the last anyone's heard any word on it. That was several months ago, now. I don't actually remember when, and good luck finding the thread on it.

You Ninja'ed me but said it better, so ya, this. All of this was made a whole lot worse by the absolutely stupid crafting rules for shields which lets a player mass produce shields for next to no cost until they get a god roll. A 10 credits average check is ridiculous and allows anyone with a halfway decent mechanics check to crank out 4 def like nothing. Prior to SM, the biggest concern was people wanting to mix two Def weapons with def armor for 3-4 Def, now people are asking about 8... crazy.

I tend to agree with the people who said there should be a max def score of 4. I'm also of the belief that shields cost needs to be closer to 100 than 10.

btw, Order 66 podcast's most recent episode covered this in their Q&A section near the end. Nothing official but they gave some interesting perspectives.

2 hours ago, Reshy said:

I'm the mechanic, so besides for repairing the ship I spend most of my time crafting because there's not a whole lot else to do. Even then crafting's limited mostly to combat items. But i wanted to do something more in the support role, rather than join the 3+ people in our group that dump everything into kill stuff.

You should really listen to the entire Skill Monkey series. Then there is:

Order 66 Podcast: 32 - And Knowing is Half the Battle

If your GM isn't finding other things for your character to do during the inevitable combat they are not being the best GM. But your responsible too, find things to do so n combat that change the battlefield in your groups favour. Flip a Destiny Point if you have to, "I flip a DP, there is a big crane on rails in this hanger, I'm going to try to use it to drop something that will block our enemy's persuit of us."

You shouldn't have to be only Q (from James Bond) hanging out in the workshop the entire session, that's where NPCS belong.

The other thing to do is invest in a skill that gives you a secondary task, probably unrelated to your primary focus. So in your case your a Mechanic, perhaps you get ranks in Piloting Planetary. All those gun bunnies you have for companions can keep their fingers on the triggers, but you get to Pilot them in the air speeder chases.

Remember how Dice pools are built? The highest of Characteristic and Skill sets the number of green dice, the lower then upgrades that pool. So a Characteristic of 4 with 2 Skill Ranks creates a pool of GGYY. But so does a Skill Rank of 4 and Characteristic of 2. It gets expensive if you do this with too many skills, but just for one to have an alternative to Intellect based skills will really give you more options.

Wooo reworking defense will be interesting, I will have to make this a thing with my group and house rule it since RAW has issues.

2 hours ago, SladeWeston said:

You Ninja'ed me but said it better, so ya, this. All of this was made a whole lot worse by the absolutely stupid crafting rules for shields which lets a player mass produce shields for next to no cost until they get a god roll. A 10 credits average check is ridiculous and allows anyone with a halfway decent mechanics check to crank out 4 def like nothing. Prior to SM, the biggest concern was people wanting to mix two Def weapons with def armor for 3-4 Def, now people are asking about 8... crazy.

I tend to agree with the people who said there should be a max def score of 4. I'm also of the belief that shields cost needs to be closer to 100 than 10.

Honestly, my issue with combat has been that it's way too easy to hit things, it's almost assured you'll hit in most cases. So that kind of relegates defense dice to reducing incoming damage (like soak would) rather than actually avoiding an attack wholesale. The whole "cover and shields don't provide benefit" line that I've seen doesn't make much sense, either thematically or crunch-wise. It only reinforces the benefit of using a two-handed weapon over anything else, as there's nothing to do with your off hand except maybe dual wield? At least in the game I have been in, soak is far more valuable than defense, because you get such a low chance to avoid an attack to begin with and the inability to add more then 4 defense dice in most circumstances just exasperates the issue. So this means that standing in the middle of a room like a nob and face-tanking anything thrown at you is the only viable option. There's no reason to do anything else because it gives no benefit.

Also, equipment in Edge of the Empire is kind of poorly designed in general. It's not just the crafting shields, there's a distinct lack of anything that isn't a combat item. Though yes, it's very cheap to pump defenses on shields.

13 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

You should really listen to the entire Skill Monkey series. Then there is:

Order 66 Podcast: 32 - And Knowing is Half the Battle

If your GM isn't finding other things for your character to do during the inevitable combat they are not being the best GM. But your responsible too, find things to do so n combat that change the battlefield in your groups favour. Flip a Destiny Point if you have to, "I flip a DP, there is a big crane on rails in this hanger, I'm going to try to use it to drop something that will block our enemy's persuit of us."

You shouldn't have to be only Q (from James Bond) hanging out in the workshop the entire session, that's where NPCS belong.

The other thing to do is invest in a skill that gives you a secondary task, probably unrelated to your primary focus. So in your case your a Mechanic, perhaps you get ranks in Piloting Planetary. All those gun bunnies you have for companions can keep their fingers on the triggers, but you get to Pilot them in the air speeder chases.

Remember how Dice pools are built? The highest of Characteristic and Skill sets the number of green dice, the lower then upgrades that pool. So a Characteristic of 4 with 2 Skill Ranks creates a pool of GGYY. But so does a Skill Rank of 4 and Characteristic of 2. It gets expensive if you do this with too many skills, but just for one to have an alternative to Intellect based skills will really give you more options.

I'll try listening to it when I have a chance, though this is mostly going off topic here I'll reply anyway. My experience with the game has been largely that it's a very combat focused system. There's no real system in place for how to handle contact (unlike shadowrun), there's a distinct lack of non-combat equipment, and that defensive items tend to woefully lag behind offensive items. The powered armor only grants 3 soak, even a low-grade blaster pistol can shoot through that.

I do try and look for ingenuity in ways I can contribute without a combat skill investment. However, the problem with flip destiny is a few fold. First is that it's a meta resource, and it's a party resource not just my own special pool of aid. Second, the GM has the final say, and often times they say no because what I (or others) are looking for is too contrived. Third, the lack of equipment outside of combat-speced gear means that you have to use destiny to help, there's not a whole lot of other options.

Don't forget to add your brawn to soak, generally base soak will be around 4 which turns a weaker weapon into something not overly lethal. Seems that defense needs to count for more than soak but even that doesn't work all that well with the powered armor reference, defense in theory should be 'harder' to hit not take a shot to the face and not care.

Just now, ASCI Blue said:

Don't forget to add your brawn to soak, generally base soak will be around 4 which turns a weaker weapon into something not overly lethal. Seems that defense needs to count for more than soak but even that doesn't work all that well with the powered armor reference, defense in theory should be 'harder' to hit not take a shot to the face and not care.

I know how soak works, believe me. I'm playing an armorer, catching things on my face is what my character does. I just wish I didn't have to just put up with catching things on my face because you can't ever dodge. Afiak, there's no full defense like in say... shadowrun. Duck for cover doesn't do anything if you have anything above very low-grade armor. Dodge dice can't be increased by any means, aside from talents or force powers (hi sense!), so you're stuck trying to squeeze the most out of defense dice which have incredibly muddy rulings.

The problem with dodging an attack is that in 90% of cases, you'll get hit no matter what. So really defense only deducts successes (and thus sparing some damage) and can negate extra attacks like crits. So I've only found that defense dice, unless they're in bulk, only act as partial soak.

2 minutes ago, Reshy said:

Honestly, my issue with combat has been that it's way too easy to hit things, it's almost assured you'll hit in most cases. So that kind of relegates defense dice to reducing incoming damage (like soak would) rather than actually avoiding an attack wholesale. The whole "cover and shields don't provide benefit" line that I've seen doesn't make much sense, either thematically or crunch-wise. It only reinforces the benefit of using a two-handed weapon over anything else, as there's nothing to do with your off hand except maybe dual wield? At least in the game I have been in, soak is far more valuable than defense, because you get such a low chance to avoid an attack to begin with and the inability to add more then 4 defense dice in most circumstances just exasperates the issue. So this means that standing in the middle of a room like a nob and face-tanking anything thrown at you is the only viable option. There's no reason to do anything else because it gives no benefit.

While I agree that cover should have a larger impact, I don't think making things harder to hit is the answer. The ease of getting hit is exactly why players should avoid combat. Giving players the ability to stack defense would only aggravate the issue of players face-tanking. At low xp totals it may not play much of an role but as you get to the 500+xp tier it is vital that mooks still be able to hit your players. Trust me, you will run out of epic nemesis level enemies really quickly if you don't.

11 minutes ago, Reshy said:

I'll try listening to it when I have a chance, though this is mostly going off topic here I'll reply anyway. My experience with the game has been largely that it's a very combat focused system. There's no real system in place for how to handle contact (unlike shadowrun), there's a distinct lack of non-combat equipment, and that defensive items tend to woefully lag behind offensive items. The powered armor only grants 3 soak, even a low-grade blaster pistol can shoot through that.

You get that Powers armor three soak adds to your players brawn for the total soak right? I mean if a player maxes out their brawn, takes the right talents and is wearing that powered armor they can have like a 11 or 12 soak, when you consider that the average mook might only be firing an 8 dmg blaster with a pool of YGG, it is certainly possible to make characters who are nye invincible already. I guess I don't see what you'd want here?

I think FFG has gone out of its way to make a system with a lot of soft caps so that no matter how awesome your players get, a heavy blaster is always dangerous. I much prefer this to the MMO style escalation that many systems use were your group can outlevel the kobolds to a point where they pose no risk.

Lastly, I'm curious why you think this system is light in non-combat gear. My person spreadsheet shows about 420 non-combat gear items (as opposed to about 280 weapons). That's not counting dozens of weapon/armor attachments and armors that have non-combat uses.

1 minute ago, SladeWeston said:

While I agree that cover should have a larger impact, I don't think making things harder to hit is the answer. The ease of getting hit is exactly why players should avoid combat. Giving players the ability to stack defense would only aggravate the issue of players face-tanking. At low xp totals it may not play much of an role but as you get to the 500+xp tier it is vital that mooks still be able to hit your players. Trust me, you will run out of epic nemesis level enemies really quickly if you don't.

You get that Powers armor three soak adds to your players brawn for the total soak right? I mean if a player maxes out their brawn, takes the right talents and is wearing that powered armor they can have like a 11 or 12 soak, when you consider that the average mook might only be firing an 8 dmg blaster with a pool of YGG, it is certainly possible to make characters who are nye invincible already. I guess I don't see what you'd want here?

I think FFG has gone out of its way to make a system with a lot of soft caps so that no matter how awesome your players get, a heavy blaster is always dangerous. I much prefer this to the MMO style escalation that many systems use were your group can outlevel the kobolds to a point where they pose no risk.

Lastly, I'm curious why you think this system is light in non-combat gear. My person spreadsheet shows about 420 non-combat gear items (as opposed to about 280 weapons). That's not counting dozens of weapon/armor attachments and armors that have non-combat uses.

My problem with my groups that I've played in is that the lack of non-combat options just cause us to fight everything. Non-combat equipment is sparse and poorly fleshed out, there's not a whole lot of ways that a weak combat character can fight a strong one and have any chance to win, etc. What you're describing isn't really how things play out, right now the other party members in my current game just chew through mooks like nobody's business and render all stealth or planning irrelevant due to their sheer combat might. There's not a whole lot of point in social encounters due to the system for it being sparse, and there's no real rules for contacts. So while you may be good at talking to people, you don't know anybody.

Have you ever played Shadowrun before? Shadowrun has gobs and gobs of gear for pretty much anything. I've found that Edge of the Empire lacks many things I'd expect to see, like a tracking beacon for instance (tried but was unable to find anything). It also has a decent (and by I mean it exists) contacts system.

Social encounters: extensive discussions on building social encounters in both Far Horizons and Desperate Allies.

Contacts: I believe Endless Vigil may have what you're thinking of.

Tracking beacon: It's either the surveillance tagger, or the personal transponder in Keeping the Peace.

30 minutes ago, Reshy said:

Have you ever played Shadowrun before? Shadowrun has gobs and gobs of gear for pretty much anything. I've found that Edge of the Empire lacks many things I'd expect to see, like a tracking beacon for instance (tried but was unable to find anything). It also has a decent (and by I mean it exists) contacts system.

Shodowrun is a much crunchier game than SWRPG will ever be. That is most certainly by design. I have played Shadowrun and while I enjoy the system, it is 10X more abusable than SWRPG and so mechanically focused that I ran into issue getting some of my more RP focused friends to want to play it.

That being said, some of what you are looking for exist. Homing beacons are in No Disintegrations and Surveillance Taggers are in the base book, I even think their is a micro bot audio bug in Endless Vigil. Speaking of Endless Vigil, it also has a Contacts system.

Edit: Damn your mad ninja skills Blackbird888

31 minutes ago, Blackbird888 said:

Social encounters: extensive discussions on building social encounters in both Far Horizons and Desperate Allies.

Contacts: I believe Endless Vigil may have what you're thinking of.

Tracking beacon: It's either the surveillance tagger, or the personal transponder in Keeping the Peace.

Of the lot I only have keeping the peace, so I can't just use those rules without forking over a lot of money. Why hide rules for such in obscure source books that most players won't ever read? These things ought to be included in the CRB.