Hi all, I've been RPing for roughly 20 years and just got into the FFG Star Wars Universe. It's a fantastic system and my gaming group is having a ton of fun!

If you don't mind helping a new GM I do have a couple of rule questions that are a bit fuzzy for me.

1) Breach-- If an item has breach, like a lightsabre, does it ignore 1 armor AND 10 soak, or 1 armor OR 10 soak? Just now writing it out, I'm thinking the armor means for vehicles and the soak is for characters.

2) I have a Jedi-ish character in the party who likes to be sneaky. She also has a power to become invisible. I tell her to roll the big white die to use the Force, and then, if she accepts the results, I give her +2 blue dice to her sneak roll. Am I doing this right?

3) I have a character in the group who has a soak of 7 How do I deal with this? He just chops his way through storm troopers with his vibro-sword while taking 1 or 2 damage a round.

1. Or

2. Dunno what you are referring to.

3. If Stormtroopers are hitting they should be doing more than 2 damage. They use blaster rifles which are base 9 damage, so on a single success they should do 3 damage to him. Sounds like your math is wrong.

If his soak is 7 and they do 9 damage, he should take 2 damage, right?

3 minutes ago, P-Dub663 said:

If his soak is 7 and they do 9 damage, he should take 2 damage, right?

+1 Damage for every uncancelled success.

For number 2: It sounds like your talking about the base power for Misdirect. To use the power, your player would roll her Force Die(Dice). She could then spend the spend the pips that appear to activate the power and any upgrades she purchases.

On the other hand, it also sounds like Talent, which is different from a Power, could be at work here but I can't think of any offhand that would allow one to do what you described. What is the name of the power you are describing? That way we can better help you understand how it works.

For number 3: When making an Combat check involving Ranged weapons, you add all the uncanceled Successes to the base damage of the weapon and then apply soak. Like the Pirate and McHyde have said, each uncanceled Success gives +1 damage and a bare minimum Successful hit will always be +1 more than base damage of the weapon.

OHHH, I've been doing that wrong all along. I thought it was +1 damage for every success after the first one. So 2 success would be +1, 3 success +2 etc etc.

Thanks for clearing that up guys.

When I get home I'll look at the sneaky force user's character sheet to give you accurate answers.

----- EDIT ----

Yes, the force user has the power "Misdirect" and has the first set of upgrades below the initial power.

I have a guy with a 7 soak and 3 defense. So, I do a few things:

1) Use snipers. Sniper rifles do a LOT of damage.

2) Give NPC's Anatomy Lessons or talents that boost damage.

3) Lightsabers go right through it!

4) Turrets hurt.

5) Auto-fire weapons... even if you do only say 3 damage from uncanceled successes, if you hit 2 or 3 times, you can really hurt the player.

6) His armor is most likely CRAZY military and pimped out like Mando armor. That type of armor isn't allowed in all places in Star Wars. If you saw a marine in FULL TACTICAL BODY ARMOR walk into a bar, he would be asked to leave. Force him to change clothes and/or only wear those things in real battles where anything goes.

Those are just a few ideas...

When you say use snipers, what are you suggesting? Just give minions some tricked out blaster rifles with scopes or is there a particular NPC [Rival] that you like to use that comes pre-generated?

I'm still getting my legs when it comes to making NPCs. Right now I've just been using what's available in the three core books.

As for that tricksy force user, she is using misdirect and has all of the second tier upgrades below the initial power.

The base power of Misdirect only affects one target until the Magnitude upgrades are reached. Then she would spend a Force pip beyond the first one spent to cause an additional number of targets equal to her Presence to be affected.

The Age of Rebellion CRB has the Scout Trooper minion adversary which can come equipped with a sniper rifle. But any weapon with at least Pierce 2 will pose a more significant threat to the high soak.

So you're telling me that Misdirect is used on the people you're trying to sneak past, not the person doing the sneaking?

Yes, the target simply cannot perceive her, another person, or an object 1 Silhouette or smaller until her next turn.

Edit: The powers start out small but grow to be pretty effective as you spend XP on the upgrades.

If you're not using OggDude's character generator, you should. The GM Tools section allows you to make encounters, insert flavor text, group up minions, and so forth. Some minion stats are available for import, others can be input manually. One of the really nice things about this system is that the NPCs are mostly interchangeable. If you need crew for a friendly capital ship, you can just take the Imperial Gunner, Naval Trooper, Naval Engineer, etc. and "re-skin" them as Rebellion military, competent civilians, etc. etc. Almost any stat block can just be labelled as something else, and only you will be the wiser.

If your budget allows, you might consider picking up the Adversary decks. Unless, your campaign focuses on wilderness or outlaws, you can probably ignore the Creatures of the Galaxy, Hunters and Force Users, and Scum and Villainy decks (at least to start). Imperials and Rebels (I & II) have a lot to offer, and Citizens of the Galaxy has a ton of useful NPCs. I really like the cards for "random encounters" and for fleshing out that NPC that the party's taken an interest in, but which you didn't really prepare anything for. In addition to the stat block, all of the cards have some nice artwork and a bit of flavor text that can help with a description or give you an angle on how to play the scene.

Thank you so much for the help guys!

I'll be picking up all of the adversary decks on Friday when I get paid.

One last question, if you don't mind: With the NPCs it says something like "ranged light: 3" I'm assuming this means they have 3 yellow dice in ranged light, even if their agility is 2?

No, it's their skill ranks for a dice pool. If their Agility is 2 the dice pool would be YYG.