Edit : question posted in EotE section as 99% of peoples check only this section

Hello, I try to figure how to resolve a combat check for a walker AT-ST shooting at soldiers. Suppose they are at long range (personal scale). There is no cover, just sands.

First I use the standard vehicle rules, the light blaster canon has a max range of close, wich is enough, as long range is within the vehicle close range. The sil 3 compared to the sil 1 says the difficulty is Hard (3purples).

Now the personal scale combat, shooting at long range is a Hard check (3purples), then you increase the difficulty by one because the AT is sil 3 wich is 2 more, according rules page 225, size difference. So finally Daunting(4purples).

wich one would you use? Would you add black dice if the soldiers had an armor with a defense bonus in case 1 and 2?

Thanks

I would use the latter, based on your description of the scene.

p.222:

Quote

Starships and vehicles may use these range bands or much larger range bands, based on the needs of the story. On a planet's surface, personal scale range bands may suffice...

I think using the 4 purples would, in this case, be more appropriate.

disclaimer: I research responses to some of these posts, in order to facilitate my own further comprehension of this system (I'm relatively new here).

Ok maybe as soon a character is involved the personnal scale should be used.

9 hours ago, Rosco74 said:

Edit : question posted in EotE section as 99% of peoples check only this section

Hello, I try to figure how to resolve a combat check for a walker AT-ST shooting at soldiers. Suppose they are at long range (personal scale). There is no cover, just sands.

First I use the standard vehicle rules, the light blaster canon has a max range of close, wich is enough, as long range is within the vehicle close range. The sil 3 compared to the sil 1 says the difficulty is Hard (3purples).

Now the personal scale combat, shooting at long range is a Hard check (3purples), then you increase the difficulty by one because the AT is sil 3 wich is 2 more, according rules page 225, size difference. So finally Daunting(4purples).

wich one would you use? Would you add black dice if the soldiers had an armor with a defense bonus in case 1 and 2?

Thanks

AT-STs have vehicle scale weapons and personal scale ones. Pick the weapon you like and this the dice pool you want. And yes, I would add defense of the soldier's armor, purely for mechanical reasons, but it is easy narratable that near misses throw debris at the warrior and the armor saves him from that. That works especially well with the grenade launcher.

Yeah, since you are using personal scale weapon from the characters, it should be a personal-scale encounter. Long range at personal scale is Hard, +1 Difficulty for the Silhouette difference. So 4 Difficulty dice total (plus Setbacks as appropriate for obstacles like jungle trees or whatnot, since walkers are not as nimble as infantry and cannot adjust as dynamically).

4 hours ago, awayputurwpn said:

Yeah, since you are using personal scale weapon from the characters, it should be a personal-scale encounter. Long range at personal scale is Hard, +1 Difficulty for the Silhouette difference. So 4 Difficulty dice total (plus Setbacks as appropriate for obstacles like jungle trees or whatnot, since walkers are not as nimble as infantry and cannot adjust as dynamically).

That gets ugly quickly as the AT-ST needs a single maneuver to move into close, blast someone with now average check and gets downright mean if use a sil 2 walker with vehicle weapons for an easy check. On the plus side, just engage the sucker and he can't use his weapons on you anymore unless he disengages first and disengage is not one of the vehicle options, so a magnanimous GM might allow you to grab on the feet and get dragged along out of harm's way from the guns.

As far as I'm concerned vehicle weapons never operate on personal scale range bands unless the vehicle carries personal scale weapons. That said, making characters fight an AT-ST on foot is one of those situation where the scale gap really messes with this game, because you essentially wind up with a situation where if the vehicle ever hits it's instant death, and if it misses nobody takes any damage at all. It's kind of missing the option of barely missing and inflicting some personal scale damage by throwing the target or debris being flung or something. There is a reason why counting down to a lethal hit by measuring health is such a common thing in games, because purely going by probability of hits makes the system extremely random. Having a higher chance of hits but making it take multiple hits to take someone out makes the game better because in order for a game to be interesting the players have to be able to predict what's going to happen next well enough to make plans, but have enough of an information horizon for no plan to be perfect.

So, the total randomness of one hit and you're dead just doesn't let you make a plan outside of just calculating the odds. The buffer of hitpoints that introduce some amount of predictability back into a random system is missing.

Hmmm, well, I have no idea where I'm going with this, but I guess what I'm saying is, I don't like how this game works when vehicles are shooting at people, so if I was running that kind of encounter I'd probably turn it into an action sequence where the players take stealth and athletics and coordination checks to evade the overwhelming firepower of the enemy and find some kind of clever solution to take them out than simply use the combat rules and roll for obliteration every turn. No fun in that. Maybe the game should have something like Parry/Reflect for when a vehicle is shooting at you, like "Hit the dirt", which allows you to take some strain to turn vehicle damage to personal damage by diving out of the way and getting thrown by the explosion in a very cool cinematic way as opposed to having it be a complete binary between either being completely unharmed or taking 50+ damage in one hit.

8 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

That gets ugly quickly as the AT-ST needs a single maneuver to move into close, blast someone with now average check and gets downright mean if use a sil 2 walker with vehicle weapons for an easy check.

The AT-ST does have some anti-infantry grenades. That's what I assume he'd be using....? Damage 10, Blast 8. It hurts, but it won't usually be an insta-kill.

But grabbing onto the vehicle's legs, very nice

On ‎3‎/‎3‎/‎2017 at 10:41 AM, awayputurwpn said:

The AT-ST does have some anti-infantry grenades. That's what I assume he'd be using....? Damage 10, Blast 8. It hurts, but it won't usually be an insta-kill.

But grabbing onto the vehicle's legs, very nice

And then you put on the satchel charges and run away?

20 hours ago, Jame Rowe said:

And then you put on the satchel charges and run away?

*Flips Destiny Point*

"Good thing I remembered to bring those satchel charges with me, just in case I needed to grab onto the legs of a walker."