I think best of all is increasing the price to trigger it by one advantage each time

I also use a "only one extra hit per target" rule, with a related rule which says things which reduce advantage cost only work once per turn.

So far I've seen; adding Setbacks, increasing cost to trigger, increasing difficulty making them harder to acquire and reducing the base damage..

I'm not a fan of the single target rule, you already have to call your shots...what if there's only 1 target?

I'm also not a fan of increasing cost to trigger the effect at least not ascending increase.

I'm personally of a mind to combine a few rules;

Increase rarity and/or restrict all Auto-fire weapons and mods that increase damage or provide automatic advantage.

Reduce the Base Damage by 2 in Auto-fire Mode (1 for Auto-fire Light Weapons) (Cause if modern weapons can have selective fire so can futuristic space weapons!)

Difficulty is already increased by 1 so add one setback per target past the first, unless its the same target then add 1 set back for every other hit past the first (The idea here is its easier to main aim if you're not moving the barrel around)

I thought about also adding additional cost on the first shot or on extra shots past the first but that adds unnecessary complexity and I think that adding setback and reducing base damage should be sufficient in most cases without detracting from the overall fun to be had.

Ultimately, pick what works best for your group and increases the fun!

As mentioned, one of the strengths of autofire comes from being multiplicative instead of additive to the extra damage from successes. You can change this somewhat if you require to spend success instead of advantages to trigger autofire.

I wonder about costing 1 success + 2 advantages per autofire hit. The advantages let you take an extra shot, the success is what it takes to hit on the extra shot, rather than rolling again.

12 minutes ago, Edgookin said:

I wonder about costing 1 success + 2 advantages per autofire hit. The advantages let you take an extra shot, the success is what it takes to hit on the extra shot, rather than rolling again.

I kind alike this one, fairly simple...but without a lot of skill + stat getting off more than 2 shots will be extraordinarily difficult...finding the balance is the trick. Unless maybe you allow a Triumph to counts as a success and an auto-fire activation.

My main concern is making it useless while trying to make it balanced.

1 hour ago, GandofGand said:

I kind alike this one, fairly simple...but without a lot of skill + stat getting off more than 2 shots will be extraordinarily difficult...finding the balance is the trick. Unless maybe you allow a Triumph to counts as a success and an auto-fire activation.

My main concern is making it useless while trying to make it balanced.

It depends on how much your players min-max for it. I am running an Age game, which they are playing a spec force team. Most of the time I don't have a lot of call to limit their gear for legality, so they face a lot of Imps. There are 2 autofire weapons in the party.

They have about 300 earned XP, and are not 100% autofire dedicated. Both have 2 ranks of True Aim (a whole other discussion), and heavily modded Heavy Blaster Rifles. One starts at 3Y1G, the other with 4Y1G. when they aim, they are up to 4Y1G1B & 5Y1G1B respectively, firing at troops at medium range in cover. Difficulty 3P1Black. Maybe 1R2P1Black. Because defense doesn't rise as fast as offense, they regularly get 3-5 successes and 4+ advantages, and often a Triumph. I'm not likely to change it this game (I don't like changing rules mid-game), but probably will in my next.

Not changing mid-stream is solid. yeah 300xp starts to get up there for sehanigans...unless you're like me and like to have 3 Specs to have as many class skills as possible then only get 1/3rd of the way downa ny given spec tree...8D

On ‎3‎/‎24‎/‎2017 at 9:00 AM, GandofGand said:

Reduce the Base Damage by 2 in Auto-fire Mode (1 for Auto-fire Light Weapons) (Cause if modern weapons can have selective fire so can futuristic space weapons!)

I can get on board with the rest of your suggestions, but not this one. While it helps with the in-game mechanics, I just can't let go of how an autofire weapon's projectiles do less damage if they are fired in a burst versus single shots. I suppose you could narratively explain it away somehow?

On ‎3‎/‎24‎/‎2017 at 9:00 AM, GandofGand said:

Difficulty is already increased by 1 so add one setback per target past the first, unless its the same target then add 1 set back for every other hit past the first (The idea here is its easier to main aim if you're not moving the barrel around)

Perhaps I'm not understanding this right, but how do you "add 1 setback for every other hit past the first"? The roll is already made when you find out how many extra hits you received (per advantage rolled). Are you saying the attacker must declare how many maximum targets he is attacking or (if attacking just one target) how many maximum hits, then apply the appropriate setback and roll?

4 hours ago, Sturn said:

I can get on board with the rest of your suggestions, but not this one. While it helps with the in-game mechanics, I just can't let go of how an autofire weapon's projectiles do less damage if they are fired in a burst versus single shots. I suppose you could narratively explain it away somehow?

You could justify it with a energy weapon just by saying that the capacitor (or whatever) can't fully recharge between shots because they're going off so rapidly. But it wouldn't make sense for something like a slugthrower.

What if subsequent hits with an autofire weapon only did base damage?

Autofire is kind of absurd, especially when you compare it to blast. Blast replaces the weapon's base damage with it's blast rating for all aditional targets hit, and it can't ever hit the same target twice. Auto fire doesn't have a rating at all, and can hit the same target over and over, and since pretty much all autofire weapons have a high base damage to begin with they wind up being terrifyingly powerful to the point where you can't make NPC use them without ruining most players fun.

My main issue with autofire is that there is no counterplay to it. It's the kind of thing where I feel like taking cover should protect you from taking 5 hits in a row, because you're in cover, you've positioned yourself so that even if you get hit you will recoil behind something that will stop further hits. With Autofire you just stand there while you're pumped full of shots with one measly non stacking defense though.

2 hours ago, Aetrion said:

Autofire is kind of absurd, especially when you compare it to blast. Blast replaces the weapon's base damage with it's blast rating for all aditional targets hit, and it can't ever hit the same target twice. Auto fire doesn't have a rating at all, and can hit the same target over and over, and since pretty much all autofire weapons have a high base damage to begin with they wind up being terrifyingly powerful to the point where you can't make NPC use them without ruining most players fun.

My main issue with autofire is that there is no counterplay to it. It's the kind of thing where I feel like taking cover should protect you from taking 5 hits in a row, because you're in cover, you've positioned yourself so that even if you get hit you will recoil behind something that will stop further hits. With Autofire you just stand there while you're pumped full of shots with one measly non stacking defense though.

The defense reduces damage from all hits and reduces total number of hits. That is already included in how the math of the roll plays out. Defensive options in general, especially from cover are somewhat lacking. You can get 3 defense from a offhand vibro-dagger, but get defense 1 from cover and both do not stack with each other?

Another thing to note, while you have some point about blast, those flame projectors actually bring the pain when you combine blast with burn. 10 Base damage, blast 2, burn 5 is a number which brings the pain really good. At least iirc you can not jury rig the burn quality down to 1 advantage. *g*

Hm, good point about combining blast and burn, that does bypass the weaksauce nature of blast ratings being really low compared to base damage on a lot of weapons.

I don't know why they made defense so wonky in the game, when they had the full range of difficulty and upgrades to play with for various layers of defense, and then collapsed it all down to just setbacks and then decided to limit those to only once source.

I also feel like there should be some forms of defense that function sort of like the Massive rule for starships, where they up the advantage cost of activating secondary effects, because the system has very few ways to protect yourself from secondary effects other than trying to build a character with absurd soak ratings.

1 hour ago, Aetrion said:

Hm, good point about combining blast and burn, that does bypass the weaksauce nature of blast ratings being really low compared to base damage on a lot of weapons.

I don't know why they made defense so wonky in the game, when they had the full range of difficulty and upgrades to play with for various layers of defense, and then collapsed it all down to just setbacks and then decided to limit those to only once source.

I also feel like there should be some forms of defense that function sort of like the Massive rule for starships, where they up the advantage cost of activating secondary effects, because the system has very few ways to protect yourself from secondary effects other than trying to build a character with absurd soak ratings.

Sounds like a good armor attachment. We've got books to go....

13 hours ago, Aetrion said:

Hm, good point about combining blast and burn, that does bypass the weaksauce nature of blast ratings being really low compared to base damage on a lot of weapons.

I don't know why they made defense so wonky in the game, when they had the full range of difficulty and upgrades to play with for various layers of defense, and then collapsed it all down to just setbacks and then decided to limit those to only once source.

I also feel like there should be some forms of defense that function sort of like the Massive rule for starships, where they up the advantage cost of activating secondary effects, because the system has very few ways to protect yourself from secondary effects other than trying to build a character with absurd soak ratings.

I this regard, I think that building those "absurd" soak+parry/reflect ratings is the key means of damage mitigation, while talents + defense are the the secondary form of mitigation and a minor source of damage avoidance. Dodge, Bodyguard, sidestep, defensive stance, circle of defense are all adding up to pretty decent defensive tools.

You can build pretty massive defensive characters this ways, it just gonna cost you and is heavily focused around the jedi ways or brutes with tons of endurance talents. If defense would stack limitlessly you would get pretty quickly into problems to apply damage at all, which comes down to how the dice interact with each other, especially as everything is built into one-roll solutions and avoidance is always and automatically damage mitigation as well.

Overall am not really a fan of the execution of the system on mechanical level, even when I am a great fan of the base concept of having multiple axis results in one roll.

The narrative portion of the game works fantastically well with the multiple different results I think. Being able to tell a little story around what that roll means is a lot of fun, and GMing is a blast when a lot of despairs come up and you get to make the players sweat. In combat it does get a bit questionable, because the outcomes of combat rolls are often very absolute, and the whole narrative angle to the system gets swallowed up in the all or nothing of attacking people.

Success on an attack immediately grants you base damage, so it's a huge jump from failure to a single success, and then advantages go from passing a boost or gaining some strain back to crits that can end the fight in a single good roll. Because of that if you build defensively you also pretty much have to go all out. That's why systems like defense are so disappointing. Sure, every once in a while an enemy will miss as a result of setbacks, but in the grand scheme of things it's not a reliable means to defend yourself.

Parry/Reflect is actually an extremely elegant and well written system IMO, because it allows you to have a strong defense on your character but there is always a cost involved in activating it, so you don't get an invincible character out of it, you're just able to mitigate the lethal nature of this game by slowly taking strain rather than getting quickly overwhelmed by wounds.

The giant problem with Parry/Reflect is that it's only available to a specific subset of characters using a very narrow range of equipment. If I were to write a second edition of SWRP I'd probably try to create a wide variety of skills that have similar mechanics to Parry/Reflect, with other activation conditions. For example, taking cover could literally work exactly like reflect does, but you need to maneuver to cover to get the option to activate it rather than wield a lightsaber. Heck, maybe that's how it should work right now, simply allowing you to take 3 strain to reduce incoming damage by 6 for example. (Or some formula, like 3 + Cunning)

Starship shields should IMO also work that way, allowing you to take system strain to avoid real damage. Shield strength could determine how many points of damage your shield can absorb instead of being black dice.

That could work, but the strain pool would become too important and would be the key of the game. Every player would build his character around this strain pool, and focus xp around it.

The cover option worth a try,

Again, each failure result on the dice reduce damage by one, up until the last success at which point the damage is reduced by one + base damage.

So dodge, sidestep, etc all have a significant damage mitigation function long before you reach the point of total avoidance of a hit. They mechanically do the same as soak, just less reliable. That is not a bad concept, but when you are very sparse with it and have very high base damage numbers AND make it unreliable in lower dice numbers AND design the rules that defense values basically never get past 4 … your conceptional made that element of your game rather limit in its effect on the game.

Furthermore upgrading the dice do little, while adding more dice is king, which reduces the effectiveness of those talents like dodge and reaching those 5+ positives dice pools is easy, meanwhile on the defense you need much more effort as you first need to upgrade all difficulty dice before you start adding new ones, which is the reason why building an defensive character requires you to go all out. Sense on top of dodge on top of side step or body guard and maybe you reach those magical 5 defensive dice to deal with the magical 5 attack dice half the time.

Than you add tons of mechanics which allow advantages to act as damage multipliers and you get a game with really odd graphs for damage distribution and combat effectiveness with xp spend. On top there is a talent system which restricts most defensive talents heavily, while spending 100 xp for 5 ranks of range heavy is open to everyone.

And btw, please don't make this into a "fix topic", it more interesting to analyse what actually is going on (and more productive!) than starting to throw 1001 ideas into the hat how to house rule the system. Especially when the easiest fixes would be to change the dice themselves to change probability distributions.

2 minutes ago, Rosco74 said:

That could work, but the strain pool would become too important and would be the key of the game. Every player would build his character around this strain pool, and focus xp around it.

The cover option worth a try,

That is the case for a lot of builds already, my hotshot spends usually 15 to 18 strain in 3 rounds of space combat and strain regeneration is an central part of what you can actually do with your advantages unless you have an autofire weapon which eats unlimited advantages for more damage.

I don't remember if this was mentioned by someone or if something someone said planted the seed, but what about making it so that shields increased the difficulty of the attack by one per rating. Then you allow the attacker to reduce shields by one for every two or three successes. Another option would simply be to reduce shields by one for every time the attack missed by the shield rating in failures or less. So if you had a shield of 3 you increase the difficulty by three and then if the attack missed by 3 or less you reduce the shield rating by one.

I'm a fan of reducing through successes though. That fits with the narrative style much better. This way shields really do help block a lot of attacks but can be reduced through repeated attacks and attacks can get through the shields from time to time. It would also make restoring the shields a much more important crew action.

Upgrading a difficulty die won't help much... except you have to deal with those despairs. Increasing the risk of despairs is bad, despairs are something really bad. So why shooting shields should be more dangerous than shooting someone or something without shields??

Sort of, you shoot at a vehicle with shields so you are supposed to upgrade difficulty dice. More chances of despairs, then more chances of running out of ammo, if your GM like to use them for that, like mine. So now, when I see someone using shields, I will think about spare clips

No really, upgrading to red dice for shields is a bad idea.

Sorry, I meant increasing the difficulty as in 4 purple instead of 3, etc. I haven't played in a while and I'm a bit rusty on the lingo.

The best Auto-fire mitigation I've found so far within the rules is the Squad rules from Age of Rebellion.

I have a PC in the group I GM that has Agility 6, Ranged (Heavy) 5 and many related talents including Jury-rigging Auto-fire to 1 advantage.

But against Nemesis level opponents I can include some minions, who then take the Skirmisher Squad formation.

Skirmisher formation ups the advantage cost to activate blast and auto-fire by 1. So now he's hitting half as many times. Unlike normal minions Squad minions drop at 1 hit each rather than wound points which further mitigates the effect (a hit for 15 points only drops one trooper instead of 3 as in a normal minion group). Also he's technically targeting the Nemesis so his defensive abilities apply before the Squaddies are getting hit at all (Adversary, higher defense, talents, etc).

The minions can be anything from stormtroopers to small defensive droids (like the Shield remote on page 53 of Special Modifications which even further boosts the Nemesis Survivability).

I usually only do this with Nemesis opponents who understand the threat he represents and are prepared for it or who would normally operate this way (such as Imperial Officers, though I usually have them start with a more offensive formation and switch to Skirmisher once they see the threat he represents).

This has virtually solved the problem for me. He's awesome when he should be which is good for him, but my bad guys survive well over a single round.

Best of both worlds

^I like this idea a LOT...nice and simple, and follows RAW too...