18 minutes ago, Ahrimon said:

There's a difference between being easy to replace and exposed and designed to push a button and it springs right out so you can slap a new one in. Magazines are purely mechanical and have to be done fast because you only get 10 to 30 shots per magazine. A star wars power cell has who knows how many shots. It could be hundreds. Plus you don't really want your power cell exposed like the bottom of a chunk of an aluminum tube.

Being a power cell its not a stretch to believe that it's designed to be quickly and easily swapped but not as quick and easy as a modern magazine. But this is a game of space wizards we're talking about so maybe they are. I'm just presenting a different point of view. Sorry for the badwrongfun.

Hold up there, space cowboy. No one said nothin' about no badwrongfun! But what you're presenting is a logical inconsistency. If something is easy to replace, then it can't also be difficult to remove, unless somehow replacing the item doesn't involve removing the item (you show me how to do that, I'll get you a good job in automotive mechanics). That's all I'm saying. You have fun the way you like it

Real-world gun mechanics aside; the game rules for general blaster weapons are that it costs a single maneuver to reload a weapon with a depleted power pack. So I'm not sure why people are trying to be more restrictive and saying it should be difficult than spending a couple Advantage once you wrest the gun from your opponent's hand to simply eject the power cell/pack.

Also, yeah, generally speaking, they don't run out of ammo much (that's a well-established trope in Star Wars lore, the insane amount of shots that one power pack can make).

For posterity:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Blaster_power_pack

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Power_cell

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Power_pack

Ive seen some stats, in the past, saying 50 shots a pack for a heavy blaster pistol.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Heavy_Blaster

so not that different from real world on ammo.

1 hour ago, syrath said:

Ive seen some stats, in the past, saying 50 shots a pack for a heavy blaster pistol.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Heavy_Blaster

so not that different from real world on ammo.

Yeah that's from Saga Edition, just meant as a game mechanic, and not as a hard "number of shots" (especially since, in Saga Edition, a single attack (d20 roll) was a single ammo count, but you could narrate the attack however you liked it—one well-aimed shot, a hail of blasterfire, or anything in between—similar to this system; just in far shorter, and more defined, time increments ).

Love the Wookiepedia editors, but they do get a little zealous sometimes, and game mechanics can tend leak into the "lore." And I totally understand that it's hard to discern the difference, because if you try to do so you're putting yourself in the place of a lorekeeper instead of a Wiki editor. But that just means its up to us GMs to be the discerning ones And the more info we share, the better we all get.

But I digress. Take a look at the source; Saga Edition is a fantastic d20 game, almost perfect IMO, but (again IMO) shouldn't really be informing our gaming in this system beyond a few pieces of imagery, star system lore, and perhaps the odd converted adventure. It should certainly not override the basic game mechanics that we have in this system, since both FFG's game and Saga Edition were simply trying to take the source material and be faithful to it, as best as their game system could represent.

--

TL;DR: Blaster weapons rarely run out of power. But when they do, heavy blasters tend to run out of power faster than regular blasters. That's basically it.

1 hour ago, awayputurwpn said:

Hold up there, space cowboy. No one said nothin' about no badwrongfun! But what you're presenting is a logical inconsistency. If something is easy to replace, then it can't also be difficult to remove, unless somehow replacing the item doesn't involve removing the item (you show me how to do that, I'll get you a good job in automotive mechanics). That's all I'm saying. You have fun the way you like it

Easy to replace does not mean simple to remove. That's what I'm getting at. A magazine is simple to remove, push a button and it drops out of the handle or body, slap a new one in and push the bolt release. This can all be done with one hand. However a belt fed weapon, while still being easy and quick to load a new belt, is not simple. You have to lift the cover, drop in in the new belt, and cock it. While still done quickly by someone trained in the weapon, it is not an easy, one handed job. Easy =/= simple. Easy to replace can be difficult for someone else to remove and easy for the wielder to remove. Say the power pack is in the hilt, but the hilt has to open up to replace it. That's not simple to replace where a combatant can come up to you, push a button and your energy cell/magazine drops out. That requires the wielder to take a few steps.

I don't think it's wise to have the energy pack exposed to the elements (and blaster fire) like a modern magazine is. A modern magazine is just some aluminum or plastic. If it get's hit, no worries. A blaster energy cell could overload and explode if hit with another blaster bolt. But this is just me.

As far as your bolding goes, I'm looking at this argument from the point of two people. Something can be easy for the wielder while being difficult for a 2nd party. Modern weapons, the 2nd party just has to push a button to remove the magazine. With space blasters, it could be that easy, but it doesn't have to be, and I don't see the need for that level of ease for power cells vs magazines.

As far as the bad wrong fun, ignore me. It was half in jest and half I have a lot on my plate and two fine folks picked my post apart since I wasn't clear enough, so I was defensive.

On 5/17/2017 at 10:33 AM, Xelian said:

edit: the emptyquote up here is accidental

I'm Currently a few hundred XP into a campaign and not having too much trouble with a mixed melee/ranged party.

Player characters are:
wookiee Armorer/Marauder who foregoes a lightsaber for RP reasons, uses a vibro-axe.
human Assassin/Force-sensitive Exile built around sniping.
cerean Seer/Niman Disciple with lightsaber, but mostly invested in force powers.

On offense, the wookiee doesn't have that trouble keeping up with the human sniper, since, while he's putting out a bit less damage per hit, he is able to generate huge crits using his modded axe and a few relatively inexpensive talents. Big crits are extremely useful against Rival and especially Nemesis-type enemies who have high soak and good defenses, as are the axe's Pierce and Sunder tags.

Specifically, he's got 2 ranks in Lethal Blows and a serrated edge mod, contributing a total of +30 to his crits in addition to the +30 from the axe's ranks in Vicious. Since he also has a monomolecular edge mod, which reduces the weapon's crit rating from 2 to 1, he also gets to add an additional +10 per each additional advantage rolled. Between these factors, it is not at all unusual for him to generate +100 crits. He's maiming or killing everything he hits, and doing it with 1,800 credits worth of equipment. The human sniper, in comparison, gets good crits since he is an Assassin, but, since he hasn't been able to mod his crit rating down to 1, he doesn't get as much from his extra advantages.

The axe, while a good weapon, is not super expensive or high-end. This is a general pattern with vibro-weapons: you get a very good collection of crit-rating and tags at a low price-point, and don't have to worry about availability. Ranged weapons with similarly good tags tend to be expensive, rare and illegal. Melee weapons are also easier to mod, since the parts are cheaper and easier to find and the weapons themselves are more disposable.

Now, let's look at some numbers

I'm kinda sloppily crunching the probabilities on this dice roller http://game2.ca/eote/ and deriving mean values from them. I might do proper math later, but what I get oughta be close.

The wookiee's base damage output is: +3 (from the axe) + 5 (from Brawn) +2 (from 2 ranks in Feral Strength) for a total of +10.

He has 2 pierce, meaning that against most enemies this is equivalent to +12.

He will generally (though not always) use Enhance to boost his Brawn when entering melee, bringing base damage to +11, or, factoring in pierce, +13.

With 6 brawn and 2 ranks in melee, his typical roll is 4 ability dice and 2 proficiency dice versus 2 difficulty dice. The average successful outcome of this is, rounding, something like 4 successes and 3 advantages. That's 13 + 3 = 16 damage.

The sniper's base damage output is +9 (from his rifle) +4 (from Deadly Accuracy) for a total of +13 .

He has no pierce, since he opted for a marksman barrel over an augmented spin barrel on his rifle.

He will generally, though not always, add an additional +4 (using Targetted Blow at the cost of a destiny point) for a total of +17.

With 4 agility and 4 ranks in ranged (heavy), plus 2 ranks in Accurate from various rifle mods, plus his Intense Focus and Quick Strike talents, his typical roll is 4 proficiency dice, 1 ability die and 3 boost dice versus 2 difficulty dice. The average successful outcome of this is, rounding, something like 4 successes and 4 advantages. That's 17 + 3 = 20 damage.

Now, I'm not saying the two are equivalent.

I think ranged characters will always be preferable for raw damage output, particularly since I don't think this particular sniper build is totally optimized (he could have 5 Agility if he wanted), and particularly since he could always switch his mods over to a Heavy Blaster Rifle and mow enemies down by using his Bantha's Eye sight to trigger easy repeat hits.

This is just an example showing that, while melee characters might not do quite as much raw damage, they're not so badly outclassed that they can't make up for it with other factors (durability, big crits from vibro-weapons, and, in this particular comparison, not having to burn Strain or Destiny Points to maintain damage output like the sniper does).

9 minutes ago, Ahrimon said:

With space blasters, it could be that easy, but it doesn't have to be, and I don't see the need for that level of ease for power cells vs magazines.

Cuz you're in the middle of a gun fight, your gun malfunctioned, and you don't wanna die? Seems like a good customer request to design a product for.

4 minutes ago, Ahrimon said:

Say the power pack is in the hilt, but the hilt has to open up to replace it. That's not simple to replace where a combatant can come up to you, push a button and your energy cell/magazine drops out. That requires the wielder to take a few steps.

Okay I think this is where the conversation is breaking down. The only thing that is being advocated regarding "ejecting the clip," as far as I can tell, is in first wresting the weapon away from the wielder and only then taking out the power pack. Not reaching over and pressing a button to get the power pack to disengage.

Once it's in your hands, it should be easy to take the power pack out (barring belt-fed guns, which is an interesting idea for keeping a fresh supply of power packs readily available, and sounds like an excellent project for a gadgeteer/tech-junkie character). Take the popular DH-17 for example:

I mean, I would let a player do this. Grab the blaster, release the power pack, throw the blaster away. Good use of an action, all things being equal. Obviously there would be exceptions to the rule, weapons that are harder to dismantle; but for the bog standard blaster, why not?

Ultimately all I really said was that I would allow a character with brawl who rolled a **** load of advantage (I consider 4 a lot, 5 more so), to disarm (capable with 3 advantage) and unclip the ammo/power pack from a weapon, regardless or not if this is something you havent seen in films, this is something Ive seen in many (but still less than 30%) of martial arts films that have heavy gun use, but I have seen this at least 40 or 50 times over the years. Given this isnt better than destroy weapon (2triumph) and it is better than a standard disarm (1 triumph or 3 advantage) so lets call it disarm+.

Ill tell you something you dont see as often, martial artists smashing up hand pistols, Ive seen a few dismantle them in short order though.

So 1/ this TO ME is cinematic, as Ive seen the trope often on screen and 2/ costed accordingly, if you do not like it, fine I can live with that, but please dont tell me that its not possible to do it, because most cinematic things are a/ not possible (ive shown it is possible with modern day weapons) and b/ you do not know how the ammo packs work in the films any more than I do, I will add one thing more and that is in the OT , the weapons were repurposed WW2 weapons, their ammo packs did come from real life weapons if you extrapolate a bit would be changed the same way, not a given, but a pretty reasonable assumption.

This also gives the brawler time to be badass , as this is only really possible if you are unarmed.

One thing to consider with regard to having an opponent move out of 'engaged' range would be to consider it a contested skill check Athletics v Athletics.

Thematically, the person attempting to disengage has to deek, roll, dodge, or otherwise get away from an opponent they are actively fist fighting/grappling with. With a high Brawn/athletic character, it should be pretty easy to keep most enemies at engaged range, and either force them melee you back, or attempt the terrible range attack difficulty modifiers.

Melee is good because Brawn is useful and Marauder is full of Toughened and Enduring. Shooting-based builds don’t get very tough. Marauder can get a character to being ridiculously resilient.

Say you go for Wookiee Marauder with a Vibro-Ax and Padded Armor. (And you never improve that gear.)

At Character Creation, you can get Brawn 5, WT 19, Soak 7. Roll Melee with YYGGG. If you’re wounded, you’re looking at 9 Damage, Pierce 2. Also, Crit 2 and +30 Crit.

At 30 XP, you can get Brawn 5, WT 23, Soak 7. Roll Melee with YYGGG. If you’re wounded, you’re looking at 11 Damage, Pierce 2. Also, Crit 2 and +30 Crit.

At 75 XP, you can get Brawn 5, WT 25, Soak 8. Roll Melee with YYGGG. If you’re wounded, you’re looking at 11 Damage, Pierce 2. Also, Crit 2 and +40 Crit.

At 135 XP, you can get Brawn 5, WT 27, Soak 8. Roll Melee with YYGGG. If you’re wounded, you’re looking at 12 Damage, Pierce 2. Also, can re-roll 1 attack per session and Crit 2 and +40 Crit.

At 210 XP, you can get Brawn 6, WT 28, Soak 10. Roll Melee with YYGGGG. If you’re wounded, you’re looking at 13 Damage, Pierce 2. Also, can re-roll 1 attack per session, do a Defensive stance, get Crit 2 and +40 Crit.

Now let’s be realistic. At 210 XP, throw in Powered Armor and a Modded Mono-Molecular Edge on the Vibro-Ax:

Brawn 7, WT 28, Soak 11. Roll Melee with YYGGGGG. If you’re wounded, you’re looking at 14 Damage, Pierce 4. Also, can re-roll 1 attack per session, Defense 1, do a Defensive stance, get Crit 1 and +40 Crit.

Now adding 60 more XP for Meele 5 and your are rolling YYYYYGG

and for even more fun add 30 EXP to gain the last two of the 3 "frenzy attack" you can use 3 strain to Roll YYYYYYYG (Important that FA upgrades the check and not add extra ranks!)

If your GM tells you 6 Brawn is maximum and the powered armor falls in this restriction you'll have to get a cybernetic arm with extra Brawn (cybernetics are the only RAW way to increase a characteristic to 7)

now add cortosis to your armor and you will be soaking up Lightsabers and heavy artillery fire, while your "range"-Friends go down like flys once a stormtrooper decides to shoot at them with the heavy blaster rifle.

And while you are at it, add cybernetic armor as well. Having a soak of 10 naked is fun. And while stormtroopers may be tempted to shoot at someone else ... your crit rating of 1 on your vibro axe should convince them pretty quickly overwise ... or go the full non-lethal approach and just use a stun-hammer with some stun (10+) quality. It's rather easy to build and you can dual-wield such stun-batons for maximum fun, basically knocking out targets in one attack for the most part.

3 hours ago, Nightone said:

cybernetics are the only RAW way to increase a characteristic to 7)

What about powered armor?

18 hours ago, Yaccarus said:

What about powered armor?

As Per Raw it is restricted to the maximum of 6 (as well as Force Power enchance, Imbue, or Stim-Specialization).

RAW you can only achieve a characteristic of 7 by using a cybernetic (and thus losing the original limb beforehand - [something my players always will whine about ^^])

You don't lose your limbs, you invest them into the future!
Together with your eyes, parts of your brain and all of your soul.

On 2018-01-15 at 9:43 PM, Yaccarus said:

Now let’s be realistic. At 210 XP, throw in Powered Armor and a Modded Mono-Molecular Edge on the Vibro-Ax:

Brawn 7, WT 28, Soak 11. Roll Melee with YYGGGGG. If you’re wounded, you’re looking at 14 Damage, Pierce 4. Also, can re-roll 1 attack per session, Defense 1, do a Defensive stance, get Crit 1 and +40 Crit.

Powered armour doesn't allow you to go over 6 brawn and doesn't add to soak. You need cybernetics for that, so gotta lose a limb and be vulnerable to ion.

Other than that, yeah wookiee maurauders are hella deadly. Once they're through the maurader tree they're goin to hit like a truck made up of lesser trucks and have enough soak to stop most attacks. I haven't picked up the class myself because it lacks a force rsting and I suspect my GM would suffer a stroke trying to balance encounters if I did.

I now see you already said the stuff about brawn and cebernetics. That should teach me to read before i post.

11 hours ago, Darth Revenant said:

Powered armour doesn't allow you to go over 6 brawn and doesn't add to soak. You need cybernetics for that, so gotta lose a limb and be vulnerable to ion.

Other than that, yeah wookiee maurauders are hella deadly. Once they're through the maurader tree they're goin to hit like a truck made up of lesser trucks and have enough soak to stop most attacks. I haven't picked up the class myself because it lacks a force rsting and I suspect my GM would suffer a stroke trying to balance encounters if I did.

I now see you already said the stuff about brawn and cebernetics. That should teach me to read before i post.

If you have the special modifications book there's rules to craft ion shielded cybernetics, you will still take strain damage from ion weapons but ion shielded cybernetics won't stop working due to ion damage.

But the problem with marauders is they are very vulnerable to strain damage, so a doctor or interrogator, thanks to pressure point would be a huge threat to this character

The other thing someone like a Marauder can do? The Signature Ability to murder every single minion (and a couple of lieutenants) in the room stone dead in two rounds. In a game with three Jedi and one Marauder, you think it was the Jedi that was a force to be reckoned with? Hah - the Marauder was the one to be utterly feared. The Jedi were pikers compared to her.