Auto-Fire OP?

By HistoryGuy, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

Fyi I asked the Devs and Sam just got back to me (I'll have to share the exact reply later) that the Two-Gun Mojo with Auto-fire would be +3 Difficulty, not +2.

So even at short range Thats Difficulty 4 before adding in "Double or Nothing" Penalty...which would kick it up to 5 so mechanically not worth any other than suppressing fire...

...or scaring the pants off of some baddies...cause if you ever DO hit...peeps are going DOWN! In any case not worth the time to build...

So I'll probably stick to the Dragoons or maybe Disruptor Pistols...muahhahahahaha

ON the surface, I see your point, but Auto Fire is ussually associated with weapons that are low damage and with a very short range.

We haven't actually used any autofire weapons yet (because they are so weak) but I don't think there's a problem.

I may change my mind later . . .

19 minutes ago, Mark Caliber said:

ON the surface, I see your point, but Auto Fire is ussually associated with weapons that are low damage and with a very short range.

We haven't actually used any autofire weapons yet (because they are so weak) but I don't think there's a problem.

I may change my mind later . . .

Huh? Heavy Blaster Rifle, Light Repeating Rifle, and Heavy Repeating rifle are all Damage 10+ with a minimum range of Long.

Maybe low damage for Ranged Light, but Ranged; Heavy usually starts around 9 dam, add in Superior and Blaster Actuating Module you can add up to +2 damage which makes it 12.

Add in 2-3 extra success + enough Advantage to hit even 1-2 extra times and you're looking at 2-3 hits at Dam 14-15...

On 3/13/2017 at 7:19 PM, HistoryGuy said:

Last session one of my players wasted equivalent to two whole minion groups with a single attack. With his gun and combat skills he's almost become a one man army against minion groups and rivals. Even he made the comment that Auto-Fire is broken.

Am I reading the rules right? He adds a difficulty die to the check, rolls for the attack, cancels die, then is left with 3 uncanceled success symbols and 4 advantages. The base damage on his gun is 9. Does that mean he can do 12 damage 3 times?

Back to the OP and helping manage autofire from PCs. Break those minion groups into smaller bite sized pieces to force Joe Gun to spread the hits out over more target sets.

I gave them one more soak and each individual one or two more hp. That seemed to help.

3 minutes ago, Benjan Meruna said:

Huh? Heavy Blaster Rifle, Light Repeating Rifle, and Heavy Repeating rifle are all Damage 10+ with a minimum range of Long.

Outside of the oddball of the heavy blaster rifle those are heavy restricted weapons and the equivalent of bringing a light machine gun in shadowrun. You surely can do it, but if you can do it without penalty, you might as well have brought planetary scale weapons along and back to low damage and low range compared to other options we are. Not the heavy blaster rifle itself is literally modells after a german machine gun, go figure how much I like that this thing is avaible for civilians. :D
Anyway, your point is still correct. It gets a little more silly even when you check out all the sniper blaster rifles, something like the E11s is utterly useless.

The auto-fire pistols at the other hand come indeed with the low damage output and sacrifice penetration power for number of hits. Those are imho really fine. Why they did not reduce the damage code for autofire on the rifles seems odd. If you require success instead of advantages to be spend for extra hits you might achieve that lower damage per shot which should balance them.

Anyway, I stay with my 16 damage, pierce 6 single-shot rifle, and technical you can mod your blaster rifle into something like this too.

2 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

something like the E11s is utterly useless.

Yeah, this makes me sad because it such a pretty gun. I'm thinking about just removing the Slowfiring and just adding in additional penalties for using it at Short range or something.

HBRs aren't restricted.

22 minutes ago, Benjan Meruna said:

Yeah, this makes me sad because it such a pretty gun. I'm thinking about just removing the Slowfiring and just adding in additional penalties for using it at Short range or something.

It still would be pretty useless, you have a sniper rifle which does still less damage than a heavy blaster thanks to all those pistol mods, and it comes with minimal pierce on top, meanwhile disrupters reign supreme with the T7, 12 damage and breach 2 and their regular, smaller brethren are still the perfect crit build weapons.

Now personally I can't complain as the heavy shatter rifle does a pretty good job with its 15 base damage + superior, accurate 2 and pierce 6, but outside of the two verpine rail guns all other sniper rifles in the game are so cringe worthy that you better just attached a longer barrel to your automatic rifle and use this instead. At least that way you are going to sniper with 2 or 3 hits per turn. ;-)

So I think the overall answer to the Questions of "Is Autofire OP?" is Yes, if the GM lets it be...anything can be house-ruled or compensated for...

7 minutes ago, GandofGand said:

So I think the overall answer to the Questions of "Is Autofire OP?" is Yes, if the GM lets it be...anything can be house-ruled or compensated for...

That sums it pretty much up. Full Automatic Weapons are powerful. :)
One of the easiest fixes is to add a restrictive to the heavy blaster rifle and the attachment which transforms a blaster into full auto and enforce this most of the time. (Same as you really should do with disruptors.)

Edited by SEApocalypse

The reason we're not using a lot of Heavy Blaster Rifles is because of the Cumbersome quality. We're all new PC's and relatively weak sophonts so they're also "too heavy."

We also tend to avoid combat like the plague so we've only been in maybe 4 or 5 fights in 25 sessions?

Then yer doing it right...8)

There are ways to counteract Cumbersome but that usually involves armor mods or certain Talents (Burly form the Heavy Specs) but doesn't sound like your group is going in that direction anytime soon.

No armor mod needed. Just the cheap and readily available Weapon Sling (weapon) attachment.

16 minutes ago, GandofGand said:

Then yer doing it right...8)

There are ways to counteract Cumbersome but that usually involves armor mods or certain Talents (Burly form the Heavy Specs) but doesn't sound like your group is going in that direction anytime soon.

Actually just using a gyrostabilizer or weapon harness solves this issue. Add a spin barrel and you have for 4,000 to 5,000 credits a damage 13, pierce 1, accurate 1 auto-rifle which by all means should be gunnery and not range heavy ^_^
The augmented spin barrel is literally meant to make heavy blaster rifle even heavier. Good plan devs. ^_^

2 minutes ago, ShadoWarrior said:

No armor mod needed. Just the cheap and readily available Weapon Sling (weapon) attachment.

Totally forgot about that one, yeah, for most species clumbersome 2 should be fine and thus the weapon Sling is enough and leaves up a hp for superior or a cheap banta-eye. Makes the thing quick-draw too.

And always remember this is exactly what a stormtrooper sergeant leading his squad of 9-11 troopers has. :D

Edited by SEApocalypse

I still like the Strength-Enhancing Armor Mod, also fantastic for Athletics...8D

6 minutes ago, GandofGand said:

I still like the Strength-Enhancing Armor Mod, also fantastic for Athletics...8D

Power Armor usually gets shut down so easily, a weapon sling is right on the weapon for outrageous 100 credits. Hand it over to the next guy and it still works.

I didn't mean Power Armor, I meant the Mod That Increase Brawn by 1 for Lifting and Carrying; can be modded for Athletics Bonuses too.

Was just discussing this with my players and one (the one with Auto-fire to boot, who also thinks jury rigged auto-fire is stupid broken) just come up with a HR that we are going to try tonight. Increase the Advantage cost by one per activation attempt, 2 for the first, 3 for the second, etc. Simple, but might be effective.

Thoughts?

I'll post back up when it gets used for feedback if interested.

That was my first idea as well, scaling up like buying a stat. Using Jury Rigged though and all the other ways to pile Advantages onto a roll still leaves a lot of hits potentially.

I liked linking total number of hits possible with an unmounted weapon to Brawn. It was simpler, put a reasonable cap on total number of hits, left it still very potent without being absurd, didn't require changing Jury Rigged or really any other rule.

11 hours ago, GandofGand said:

I didn't mean Power Armor, I meant the Mod That Increase Brawn by 1 for Lifting and Carrying; can be modded for Athletics Bonuses too.

Yeah, but the armor has to be powered for that to happen. So, it’s power armor or Power Armor, one way or the other.

6 hours ago, Jareth Valar said:

Was just discussing this with my players and one (the one with Auto-fire to boot, who also thinks jury rigged auto-fire is stupid broken) just come up with a HR that we are going to try tonight. Increase the Advantage cost by one per activation attempt, 2 for the first, 3 for the second, etc. Simple, but might be effective.

Thoughts?

I'll post back up when it gets used for feedback if interested.

Mathematically I think switching the resources from advantages to success works better, because this way you have a better curve in damage distribution and the overall damage flats out the more activations you take. Furthermore it takes the damage component away from the advantages and leaves them for more narrative use. I honestly would not be surprised if this rolls better with all qualities which are sources for damage, from auto-fire over blast to linked.

In many ways spending advantages to increase damage and thus basically increase the level of success from your combat roll is in direct opposition of the spirit of duality of dice.

8 hours ago, bradknowles said:

Yeah, but the armor has to be powered for that to happen. So, it’s power armor or Power Armor, one way or the other.

I wasn't aware that mod required the system to be powered...I'll have to go re-read that details then.

On 16/03/2017 at 2:26 AM, 2P51 said:

Back to the OP and helping manage autofire from PCs. Break those minion groups into smaller bite sized pieces to force Joe Gun to spread the hits out over more target sets.

Or just engage the person wielding the autofire weapon. Nine times out of ten, it's on a Ranged (Heavy) weapon, which incurs a +2 to difficulty to fire whilst engaged. Have a group of cannon fodder in front to soak up the first spray and a group with melee weapons behind ready to assault.

Or make them fight a Droidekka with shields. It also has a firespray ability. Fight fire with fire!

Or remind them that it's not a domestic/concealable weapon that you carry around town. They will have to pick and choose when to bring it along.

Problem solved. No need to nerf it.