Me Again.

In the last game I ran, the players chased my Nemesis (Who was supposed to escape and come back in due time with evil schemes) down and shot his STAP out from under him, letting him cascade down a flight of stairs in a fireball of screaming agony.

Among other things they looted a Moderately Damaged Portable Shield Generator off him, which the Heavy promptly claimed. He hasn't spent the credits to repair it, and he asked if he could still use it.

Table 5-4 in Edge Core gives the difficulty for repairing equipment and the penalty for trying to use it while damaged, but you don't really use the Shield Generator - you just turn it on and let it go.

Would I apply any difficulty increases regarding it's use?

As always, thanks for reading.

You do use it. If you are not using it it gives no benefit. Apply the modifiers as per the book. If you want a narrative reason, a shield generator created a shield in a bubble around what ever it is protecting. If it is damaged that bubble might fluctuate, not enough to disable or impair the functionality, but quite possibly just enough to throw the person using it off balance, or obscure their vision, or a myriad of other things that could cause the user to suffer some ill-effect.

How damaged is it?

Like it flickers and can screw with vision giving set back dice to attacks?

Or its rad shielding is cracked so the user suffers accumulating strain for each turn its on?

Or its power core is in flux and works super well until the thing melts down and explodes at some random moment in time?

Lots and lots you can do with damaged equipment, or you could just tell him its not really functional and will only work one more time before he has to put some credits or effort into getting it repaired

Have him roll a Mechanics check with one or two red dice.

Edit: If he succeeds and gets a Despair, the shield turns on but only works inward. He gets the two Setback that the shield awards to incoming attacks.

On a related subject, is there a method of damaging items other than via Sunder or Despair? In d20 items had the equivalent of WT and soak, so it was straightforward. In FFG, every door is a blast door, as they can be hit repeatedly by blaster fire or explosives and remain completely intact. Same for crates.

10 hours ago, Darcune said:

Me Again.

In the last game I ran, the players chased my Nemesis (Who was supposed to escape and come back in due time with evil schemes) down and shot his STAP out from under him, letting him cascade down a flight of stairs in a fireball of screaming agony.

Among other things they looted a Moderately Damaged Portable Shield Generator off him, which the Heavy promptly claimed. He hasn't spent the credits to repair it, and he asked if he could still use it.

Table 5-4 in Edge Core gives the difficulty for repairing equipment and the penalty for trying to use it while damaged, but you don't really use the Shield Generator - you just turn it on and let it go.

Would I apply any difficulty increases regarding it's use?

As always, thanks for reading.

I'd just have it do less than listed.

That particular piece of gear also has some specific failure rules you could downgrade, instead of just a Despair it fails on 3 Threat for minor, 2 for moderate, and 1 for major and call it done.

Invert it.

The shield gives a setback to any attacks against it. If it's damaged, they get a boost too.

Or take the appropriate damage penalties as per the core rules and apply them to, for example, all visual-based checks the person wearing the shield makes as it warps light and interferes with his vision.