Hi all

One thing I've seen mentioned a few times on these forums is the inability of a single nemesis to take on multiple PCs. I know there's the "Inquisitor" solution, and for ranged nemeses there are blast weapons and/or autofire. But it occurs to me that one relatively easy solution would be to create a talent that essentially gives an NPC "autofire" for melee and brawl attacks. The NPC must increase the difficulty of their attack to Hard; if they roll 2 Advantage on a successful attack while engaged with multiple PCs, they deal an additional hit to any PC, provided they have declared it first (as with autofire).

Obviously there are issues with autofire as well. So perhaps amend it to 3 Advantage rather than 2? But still, seems like a way to make really good close combat characters (Sith Warriors, Black Sun assassins, etc.) a genuine threat to an entire party, especially in confined spaces.

What do you guys think? Good idea? Bad idea?

Thanks in advance.

Sounds like a video game character in a boss fight.

Why wouldn't a Sith Inquisitor just pick up a buncha stuff and throw it with Move?

An Inquisitor with ranks of Adversary, Dodge, Defensive Stance, etc, should have Improved Parry popping quite a bit.

Unleash lets you do crazy stuff.

Solo enemies die pointless, quick and stupid deaths. Your suggestion does nothing to change this.

Melee is plently scary, the abundance vicious, low crit weapons see to that.

I believe "bad guy dying to the PCs too quickly" has been a problem of RPGs since the very beginning, and is not unique to this system.

Solo beings suck in this system. It's the one thing D&D does right, giving multiple attacks or other "party-affecting" powers.

I would give the boss a personal bodyguard or three. This is not an independent minion or rival, but gives the boss some extra WT/ST, and has as many attacks as there are bodyguards left.

What can help to an extent is the "Enhanced Adversary Rules" that are mentioned in the "Under a Black Sun" Free RPG day adventure, the EotE GM's Kit, and at the very end of the Adversary chapter in Force and Destiny.

It's there so that a solitary Nemesis who's facing a party of four or more PCs has the option to act twice per round in a combat, once in whatever slot they rolled for during initiative, and a second time at the very end of the round after all the PCs have gone.

I've found it does help a bit, as it gives the Nemesis a chance to attack more often, but there's still the very real chance of the PCs simply dog-piling on your BBEG. Inquisitors and similarly-themed villains fare a little better as they can have Parry and/or Reflect (frankly, I give them both talents at equal ranks) to help reduce the damage they're taking, but those talents are only useful as long as the BBEG has strain to spend on them and the appropriate weapon in their hand. I think I kind of annoyed GM Chris (of the Order 66 podcast) when my Gunslinger used two Triumphs to destroy the weapon of the adventure's BBEG and thus negating a couple of his more notable defensive abilities; he may have been expecting the fight to turn out one way, but it wound up going a very different direction (and to be honest, I was expecting it to play out in a way similar to what Chris likely imagined).

As for getting multiple hits with a melee weapon, the most readily available option is attacking with two weapons; you can help mitigate that increased difficulty by using the Paired attachment from Fly Casual (reduces the Advantage cost needed to hit with the secondary weapon by one). Other choice is melee weapons with the Linked quality, of which the only two that spring to mind are the double-bladed lightsaber and the electrostaff, both of which have Linked 1, and getting thwacked with either one is no picnic.

I think you'd have more success with building on the multi-turn rules, and with working with the players to create situations in which the PCs and bad guys have one-on-one or two-on-one duels, as is tradition in Star Wars stories. It's both a system and a storytelling issue, and you need to work on both levels to deal with it.

11 hours ago, whafrog said:

Solo beings suck in this system. It's the one thing D&D does right, giving multiple attacks or other "party-affecting" powers.

I would give the boss a personal bodyguard or three. This is not an independent minion or rival, but gives the boss some extra WT/ST, and has as many attacks as there are bodyguards left.

Interesting idea - is that a house rule, or is it in one of the supplements?

10 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

What can help to an extent is the "Enhanced Adversary Rules" that are mentioned in the "Under a Black Sun" Free RPG day adventure, the EotE GM's Kit, and at the very end of the Adversary chapter in Force and Destiny.

It's there so that a solitary Nemesis who's facing a party of four or more PCs has the option to act twice per round in a combat, once in whatever slot they rolled for during initiative, and a second time at the very end of the round after all the PCs have gone.

...

As for getting multiple hits with a melee weapon, the most readily available option is attacking with two weapons; you can help mitigate that increased difficulty by using the Paired attachment from Fly Casual (reduces the Advantage cost needed to hit with the secondary weapon by one). Other choice is melee weapons with the Linked quality, of which the only two that spring to mind are the double-bladed lightsaber and the electrostaff, both of which have Linked 1, and getting thwacked with either one is no picnic.

1

Yeah, I know about the Enhanced Adversary Rules - was just looking for an alternative. These rules are fine, but they do draw a combat out for longer - autofire (or equivalent) does extra damage within the turn with adding extra manoeuvres, actions, rolls, etc. so the encounter doesn't drag too much. No? Or am I just inventing problems now?

As for Linked and/or Two-Weapon combat, don't both of those have to target the same character? Whereas a port of autofire onto melee would enable the attacker to strike at multiple opponents.

11 hours ago, 2P51 said:

Sounds like a video game character in a boss fight.

Why wouldn't a Sith Inquisitor just pick up a buncha stuff and throw it with Move?

An Inquisitor with ranks of Adversary, Dodge, Defensive Stance, etc, should have Improved Parry popping quite a bit.

Unleash lets you do crazy stuff.

Why didn't Darth Maul just throw things at the Jedi? Because it was much, much, much cooller to just take two of them on at once with a lightsaber. (I mean, sure, he died, so it wasn't a great plan per se, but still...)

And while Adversary, Dodge, Defensive Stance, Parry, etc. are definitely good for individual nemeses, they only make him/her/it harder to kill - they don't give you that cinematic moment where he/she/it punches one of the PCs in the face while kicking another in the balls, or pulling off a big sweeping flourish with a lightsaber.

11 hours ago, 2P51 said:

Sounds like a video game character in a boss fight.

Why wouldn't a Sith Inquisitor just pick up a buncha stuff and throw it with Move?

An Inquisitor with ranks of Adversary, Dodge, Defensive Stance, etc, should have Improved Parry popping quite a bit.

Unleash lets you do crazy stuff.

I appear to have quoted you twice and I can't work out how to remove the second quote. #fail

A developer Q&A might have answered this, but I can't see anything in the RAW to suggest that you can't hit two different targets with two weapon fighting. I'd certainly allow it at my table, anyway.

Linked does have to be the same target, though. You could replace it with auto-fire if you want to hit multiple targets, or throw in some made up talent for your NPC which says they can allocate linked hits to multiple targets, if auto-fire doesn't seem thematic.

11 hours ago, whafrog said:

Solo beings suck in this system. It's the one thing D&D does right, giving multiple attacks or other "party-affecting" powers.

I would give the boss a personal bodyguard or three. This is not an independent minion or rival, but gives the boss some extra WT/ST, and has as many attacks as there are bodyguards left.

You're sure that D&D does this right or not rather established a trope in RPGs which was the mistake all along? The concept of boss fight in and itself is imo a ludicrous idea for Pen&Papers. Boss Fights are great in computer games, but they are not necessary something you should even aim to have on your table. Confrontation with powerful adversaries is for sure something interesting, but breaking it down to a singular boss fight, with the "end boss" of a whole campaign fighting a whole group on his own ... it not only ridiculous, but it opens the can of worms to make the player characters sidekicks to the big characters of the gameworld as different factions usually have all this "class" of characters which could take singlehandedly on whole groups player characters. It basically degrades PCs to minions who battle to big, bad nemesis. Instead of characters on equal terms to their nemesis.

37 minutes ago, Tom Cruise said:

A developer Q&A might have answered this, but I can't see anything in the RAW to suggest that you can't hit two different targets with two weapon fighting. I'd certainly allow it at my table, anyway.

Two Weapon Fighting is against the same (one) target. Checkout autofire for when the rules factor in multiple targets.

A talent for your Nemesis which lets them use it against more than one target would be more appropriate, perhaps?

22 minutes ago, Tear44 said:

Two Weapon Fighting is against the same (one) target. Checkout autofire for when the rules factor in multiple targets.

Right, thanks for the clarification. Either way I'd probably allow it, hardly seems overpowered in a world where autofire exists, and it makes sense logically for two weapons to be able to hit two different targets if they're both engaged.

I just accept that one being is limited by being one being. I compensate by using groups of bad guys (even Nemeses) and/or offering in-game reasons to split the party up. It works out just fine.

You didn't have Vader squaring off by himself against Obi-Wan, Luke, Lando, Han, Chewbacca, Leia, and the droid duo all at once. Jabba was perfectly secure until he was alone. Kylo Ren and Maul never really went beyond 2:1 odds.

24 minutes ago, Tom Cruise said:

Right, thanks for the clarification. Either way I'd probably allow it, hardly seems overpowered in a world where autofire exists, and it makes sense logically for two weapons to be able to hit two different targets if they're both engaged.

Your table, your choice.

But keep in mind the Gunslinger has a 25xp talent that lets them multi target with 2 weapon fighting. Devs feel that option is a powerful one.

1 hour ago, HappyDaze said:

Kylo Ren and Maul never really went beyond 2:1 odds.

Maul started the fight 2:1, but he ended it 1:2

49 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:

Maul started the fight 2:1, but he ended it 1/2

Fixed that for you. *grins*

I would spilt the parties a lot of the time to ensure that a entire party can never fight one guy. The entire idea of a "mega boss" doesn't really work in the traditional sense; the party will overwhelm the boss with sheer volume of attacks. It makes sense for something like a dragon or the harbinger of all times requiring a bunch of heroes of the light, but most of the time we see inquistor level characters as characters with super human abilities that still require escort. More often then not the combat is moving in star wars boils down to one or two characters against the big bad wolf, where their stats invested in the force/being a general badass finally pays off. More often then not the villain might be looking to accomplish some other objective, even if that means his own escape.

Alternatively he has dangerous minons/multiple rival combatants which the other characters need to engage. I remember one scene where the party got overpowered because they all tried to attack the inquistor and ignored the 3 squads of stormtroopers; they were gunned down and captured by turn 4 as the inquistor decided to play it entirely defensively and ran away after catching a few of the attacks. Ignoring the minons would get them killed.

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Why didn't Darth Maul just throw things at the Jedi? Because it was much, much, much cooller to just take two of them on at once with a lightsaber. (I mean, sure, he died, so it wasn't a great plan per se, but still...)

And while Adversary, Dodge, Defensive Stance, Parry, etc. are definitely good for individual nemeses, they only make him/her/it harder to kill - they don't give you that cinematic moment where he/she/it punches one of the PCs in the face while kicking another in the balls, or pulling off a big sweeping flourish with a lightsaber.

Errr actually adding lots of red dice allows you to achieve those same odds. Maul likely spent his dispairs to kick Obi-Wan off the platform, that allowed him to concentrate solely on Qui-Gon for a time and eventurally kill him. Improved parry also allows him to improve his action ecomany without handing out extra actions.

5 hours ago, edwardavern said:

Why didn't Darth Maul just throw things at the Jedi? Because it was much, much, much cooller to just take two of them on at once with a lightsaber. (I mean, sure, he died, so it wasn't a great plan per se, but still...)

And while Adversary, Dodge, Defensive Stance, Parry, etc. are definitely good for individual nemeses, they only make him/her/it harder to kill - they don't give you that cinematic moment where he/she/it punches one of the PCs in the face while kicking another in the balls, or pulling off a big sweeping flourish with a lightsaber.

I appear to have quoted you twice and I can't work out how to remove the second quote. #fail

Improved Parry triggers off of Threat and Despair, all the Talents I quote will caused that to trigger based off what the PCs attack results are.

But if you really want a mega boss … AT-STs, AT-EST and other walkers and tanks are a thing, they are quite the boss fight for a group of characters without their own vehicle scale weapons. You better have a plan for that fight too, because that boss might one-hit you with his main gun. ;-)

There is an auto-fire-like talent in the form of Sarlacc Sweep, and it works the same, except for only working at engaged range.

6 hours ago, edwardavern said:

Interesting idea - is that a house rule, or is it in one of the supplements?

I can't really call it a house rule, since I haven't hosted such a scenario yet, I was just riffing. I generally go for numbers (minions and rivals) and try to keep even the "bosses" at a human scale. And so far I've been able to split up the group so that everybody is doing something else important and the "boss fight" (such as it is) is only one facet of the situation. Just MHO, but to SEApocalypes' point, that is a better way to handle SW scenarios.

However, let's say you wanted to replicate something like Bolg and his bodyguard at the end of the Hobbit (the book, not that stupid movie). Narratively, Bolg and his bodyguard are inseparable. So rather than make a separate set of rivals to make up the "bodyguard" in the mechanics, let the mechanics reflect the narrative. It would also be easier to scale than trying to decide whether you need 2 rivals or 4 or whatever.

6 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

You're sure that D&D does this right or not rather established a trope in RPGs which was the mistake all along? The concept of boss fight in and itself is imo a ludicrous idea for Pen&Papers.

They do it right in the context of the question being asked by the OP. As to whether the trope is a mistake...<shrug>. I think it's generally not a good idea (and is way overused) for SW, but there's nothing wrong with it for D&D if that's what turns your crank.

3 hours ago, 2P51 said:

Improved Parry triggers off of Threat and Despair, all the Talents I quote will caused that to trigger based off what the PCs attack results are.

Ah, I realised I was misreading the Improved Parry talent. My apologies.

3 hours ago, Blackbird888 said:

There is an auto-fire-like talent in the form of Sarlacc Sweep, and it works the same, except for only working at engaged range.

Really? I completely missed that. Thanks!

Use the squad rules. Whenever you bad guy is hit, it was one of his minions in his squad. Up to 11!