When we first started playing, and characters were new, and the players were new to the system, the players spent their advantage on all sorts of crazy things. Disarming opposition, boost dice, strain recovery, closing blast doors, targets trip, lights go off, panels explode, etc.

It was wild and wacky.

Then, the players settled into the rules, and the characters got better at what they do. The Jedi started Reflecting, the Merc began moving and straining to Aim, other characters started using their talents like Dodge.

Now, "Strain Recovery" seems to be all they use Advantage for. Outside of enabling Auto-Fire twice, and the Jedi using four during one roll for a brutal Crit, they only spend Advantage to power their combat talents.

I view this as their characters getting better. Fewer wild shots, more precise actions, more experienced people doing their thing. However, I can't help but miss the Happy-go-lucky crazy zanyness of spending Advantage (and Triumphs for that matter) on story and environmental effects.

How do your mid - higher level parties spend their Advantage?

They recover Strain as they need it. They pass along as many Boosts as they can get away with me. It's funny they never seem to get the notion of ganging up and stacking Setbacks or Challenges on particularly tough adversaries.

We adjust according to the situations. Against critical enemies we apply upgrades and setbacks, trying to distract high-threat targets while eliminating similar high threat targets with superior initiative. Critical hits are applied to especially dangerous or tough targets, we have a murder bot with disrupters for this in the group. Next on the priority list is applying boosts to party members, either focusing on one specific if his roles are especially important, like the murder bot when shooting at inquisitors with high reflect ratings or just passing from one to the next, creating a full circle as this is cheaper.

Lastly, disarm, knocking down, disabling gear and weapons and interacting with the environment are especially popular. The least popular thing is recovering strain, usually only done if the strain threshold starts to come dangerously close.

This holds even more true in space combat, because in space every attacker is dangerous and preventing them from shooting, creating collisions with clover maneuvering or shooting, etc anything that protects our ships and let us escape quickly. (So far we had no offensive missions involving vehicle combat, and most likely this will not change in the near future either, so defense trumps offense when running away from a star destroyer and his fighters.)

It depends really; my character particularly burns through strain like crazy due to having dodge, parry and reflect hence I would be a little crazy if I did not at least consider the possibility of strain recovery in really heated situations.

Things I use advantage on:

Disarming, knocking down is employed more or less exclusively on tough rivals/nemesis, dandy for me because I'm quite a mobile duelist (hawkbat allows me to move as an action, which frees up my move to kite them and move without spending strain, or the option of a double move. Alternatively, being trained as an assassin by a evil crystal means I can use basically anything)/ thus anything that reduces the number of actions/options of their part is fairly appealing. I will often pass a boost dice the next ally if I feel it makes sense, but I will rarely pass a boost dice to a player unless they really need to preform an important action. I will pass setback dice, but only if it's being done as part of a greater effort, usually one setback dice doesn't make a huge difference either way.)

I rarely do anything with the environment unless it makes sense.

90% of the time, our group just lets the next character take a blue die per advantage generated.

However they **** well please!!!

Just remember, the GM does have final say, and the GM spends all disadvantages for PCs and NPCs.

The group I run typically tries to get the most band for their advantages as they can. So if 3 are rolled hey use the 1St advantage to give the next acting PC a BOOST die, and then the next 2 advantages to give out a BOOST die to a selected player (typically the same one that is acting next). They have started to follow my routine of using advantages to put an NPC into COVER or take an additional maneuver.

When you are GMing write down player's advantage spending habits when you remember, then look back later post session to see how as a GM you can spend both NPC advantages and all game disadvantages to facilitate player's to spend in other ways. Having an NPC give a Minion group early battle an extra immediate maneuver to take cover or aim. You want ruthless Minion groups, Sgt uses a Tactical Direction to generate a commanded maneuver to grant a BOOST die to a single Minion groups next action, in addition you can use a leadership check to allow the Tactical Direction to effect additional Minion groups(go examine Leadership) you also might use it to be effective on a Minion group longer. If a PC generates enough disadvantage you can grant a free maneuver to a Minion group to Aim, then when they active, they Aim again. A quick 3 BOOST die bump. Stay on Target!

KSW

In combat, my players tend to favor triggering critical injuries, passing along boost dice and strain recovery, in about that order, though the Soresu Defender tends to favor strain recovery when possible, especially now that he's picked up Circle of Defense from the Protector spec and thus has a tendency to burn through his strain with alarming speed. Occasionally they'll think to do things like disarm or apply setback dice to the attacker's check, or even give themselves an extra point of ranged defense, but since those tend to take 3 advantages, they're more likely to go for a critical.

22 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

, but since those tend to take 3 advantages, they're more likely to go for a critical.

The pain of low damage weapons when you need to fish for criticals instead of overpowering targets with raw damage.

I know why I prefer high damage slugthrowers over fancy lightsabers. Extra defense. upgrading difficulty and especially disarming enemies and take way their weapons helps so much

As a speed thing... advantage not needed for crits, blast, strain get converted into the rolling boost die pool, more or less without an explanation other than "teamwork" but we still take the time to narrate triumph... got into that habit when I had 7 players at the table now I only have 6 player and one of them teleconferences in so he's using his own dice so less dice passing.

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