"'Hi there,' said a voice.

All our eyes looked through the doorway to the source of the voice. It was a small hangar, with three ships parked inside. Seven figures stood poised in the darkness, most of them holding blaster rifles. The one who spoke stepped forward, eyes gleaming as he hefted his missile tube."

We rolled initiative right after this, and I moved first, as the group is familiar with the bonus abilities I get for doing so.

I then made a called shot, asking our GM if I could shoot the missile tube and detonate the missile inside. He ruled that I would have to generate as much advantage as the wielder might to activate Blast. My roll ended up with one success and two advantage, and the GM deemed it successful.

We won the fight, and the missile tube did blow up in cinematic fashion, but one player felt that my called shot was BS. In his words: it was "too cool" of a moment to get without spending a Force point.

My problem is that called shots ( or the variant function of the Aim Maneuver, technically) are not specified as to their effect. I left it up to the GM to decide how much the cost would be to activate, but I recognize the danger of exploitation.

Can you offer feedback on what could have been done differently to make my called shots more reasonable? I want to keep doing them, but I don't want it to be an issue.

Thanks for reading.

Generally speaking, you would have needed to take a maneuver to Aim at the missile, adding, not a Boost die, but two Setback dice to your roll. If you took a second Aim, you could drop one of those Setbacks .

Assuming you did that? Sure, I'd let you activate the Blast ability of the missile on a success, but I'd probably say you'd need to activate it as if the missile's attack had "missed," meaning you'd need [AAA], and it would only deal the base Blast damage, and you'd be forfeiting any damage from your blaster. Also, I'd probably give the missile Defense 1 or even 2 from the protection offered it by the tube itself, but with all of that, I'd probably not require a Destiny Point be spent. Although with a minimum of 3 Setbacks on the check, my players would probably spend one anyway, just to make sure they hit .

And thinking a bit more, especially if you double-aimed, I might have you roll a fear check, because you are literally gambling your life that you're a good enough crack shot to hit the missile in the tube, and if you miss you already gave up your chance to dodge out of the way of the explosive ordinance. So depending on how that goes, that might end up adding an additional Setback . AND I, as GM, world almost certainly spend a Destiny Point myself to upgrade your check, because there are certainly plenty of things that could go catastrophically wrong with a maneuver like that !

Oh, and you didn't mention what kind of enemy it was, but the target's ranks in Adversary would still apply to the check, so more potential upgrades there.

Ultimately, I can see where your friend is coming from, but at the end of the day, as long as the GM applies some of these basic difficulty increases, it's fine in my eyes. Using explosives is ALWAYS a gamble for the user. You want a 0% chance of getting blown up? Don't use weapons that CAN blow up.

Yeah... I would have required more advantage to blow it up, and it would have been a **** hard shot to make, but that kind of shot is what Star Wars is all about...

I call BS on his BS call.

I can see where it might seem a bit BS - in the real world, rockets & missiles don't arm until they've traveled a certain distance. OTOH, it seems cool to me in the moment, and I'd let it go, though I might agree with Absol197 & want 3 advantage (or a triumph) to detonate it.

This is what the Call 'Em talent was made for.

(And that would apply to that instance - doing it once is awesome and cool. Trying to do it over and over is boring and thus uncool.)

Of course, that way next time it'll be a called shot to the knee and cause him to drop the launcher just as it launches... Now pointed at the ground.

Then a called shot to his hand so he drops it.

Then a called shot to his arm to make him jerk it so it flies off somewhere else..

And on and on!

2 hours ago, Absol197 said:

Generally speaking, you would have needed to take a maneuver to Aim at the missile, adding, not a Boost die, but two Setback dice to your roll. If you took a second Aim, you could drop one of those Setbacks .

Assuming you did that? Sure, I'd let you activate the Blast ability of the missile on a success, but I'd probably say you'd need to activate it as if the missile's attack had "missed," meaning you'd need [AAA], and it would only deal the base Blast damage, and you'd be forfeiting any damage from your blaster. Also, I'd probably give the missile Defense 1 or even 2 from the protection offered it by the tube itself, but with all of that, I'd probably not require a Destiny Point be spent. Although with a minimum of 3 Setbacks on the check, my players would probably spend one anyway, just to make sure they hit .

And thinking a bit more, especially if you double-aimed, I might have you roll a fear check, because you are literally gambling your life that you're a good enough crack shot to hit the missile in the tube, and if you miss you already gave up your chance to dodge out of the way of the explosive ordinance. So depending on how that goes, that might end up adding an additional Setback . AND I, as GM, world almost certainly spend a Destiny Point myself to upgrade your check, because there are certainly plenty of things that could go catastrophically wrong with a maneuver like that !

Oh, and you didn't mention what kind of enemy it was, but the target's ranks in Adversary would still apply to the check, so more potential upgrades there.

Ultimately, I can see where your friend is coming from, but at the end of the day, as long as the GM applies some of these basic difficulty increases, it's fine in my eyes. Using explosives is ALWAYS a gamble for the user. You want a 0% chance of getting blown up? Don't use weapons that CAN blow up.

Gunslinger talent "Call 'em" prevents the addition of setback for an aimed maneuver ?

Yes, it most certainly does. And the Gunslinger in my campaign uses it frequently for ridiculous shenanigans, aided and abetted by his maxed-out Unmatched Fortune. But the OP made no mention of either being a Gunslinger or having this talent, so I chose not to assume that he was/did.

Obviously, if he is a Gunslinger with Call 'Em, then not only is this shot much easier, but his friend has even less of a leg to stand on, as this sort of absurdly precise crack shooting is exactly the thing the OP's character is built for!

My character is a gunslinger, but I haven't invested in the talent specifically because I was unsure how it could be applied in game. I love the option to make "trick" shots that change how the fight goes, even when they don't do damage directly (What happens if I shoot a jetpack mid-flight?) but I don't want my character to be that guy who steals the spotlight with his actions in combat. I've been accused of that before.

As to the difficulty, we chose to use the enemy (A Nemesis with two ranged defense) as a target, then add the Setback Die for targeting his Missile Tube. At Medium the difficulty became 2 Red, 4 Black.

Thanks for the help, folks. I hope I can keep my Called Shots to a minimum to reduce a chance of overuse, but I like the effects so far.

4 hours ago, Darcune said:

I don't want my character to be that guy who steals the spotlight with his actions in combat.

Isn't that kind of what characters like Gunslingers are supposed to be? Others should have their moments to shine, but fancy shooting shenanigans are what you bring to the table. Do not be afraid to take the spectacular shots your PC is capable of attempting; maybe others in the party need spend more time worrying about what awesome tricks they can pull from their own respective... hats.

Well, the Book does say: "This could allow the character to attempt to strike or shoot a weapon from his opponent's hand [...]."

So, that's what you're going to get for aiming: You hit, they drop.

I'd consider giving the attack sunder, giving you the opportunity to damage/destroy the missile tube, assuming sufficient advantages. Making it blow up in the wielder's face, that would take a triumph, for what it's worth.

Yea I agree that probably should take a triumph for it to blow up in the welder's face.

My previous reply was in response to the general query, but I'm inclined to agree with the consensus here- that the GM was very generous in allowing that with just two advantage. So long as the GM is equally lax when it comes to the other PCs pulling off their heroics, I still don't see an issue.

True

In this instance I think I bamboozled the GM with a topic he was unfamiliar with. In future, I think a triumph or 4 advantage would make more sense.

On 5/18/2017 at 2:53 PM, Darcune said:

but I don't want my character to be that guy who steals the spotlight with his actions in combat.

Oh, they can suck it. It's freaking Star Wars, man - EVERYone gets a chance to steal the spotlight all the time. The entire universe is made up of people being awesome! If the whiners are complaining about you being creative with your talents and showboating, then they need to shut up and create their OWN moments of awesomeness.

Play your character the way you want and let them do as they want.

As for the ruling in question? A gunslinger shooting a missile down mid-flight? I would absolutely let you do that! Activating blast (on a successful double aimed hit) seems like a great off-the-cuff ruling

I think it was an awesome outcome, but for 2 advantage I'd probably just have it misfire and jam in the tube. Force the NPC to un-jam and reload a new missile.

So instead of destroying the weapon, force an action to un-jam the weapon, a maneuver to reload (as I assume the NPC was carrying more than one missile). Still puts the bfg out of commission for a turn, or two if the NPC dives for cover to fix the jam.