Dealing with Gear Creep

By GandofGand, in Game Masters

1 hour ago, Wrenn said:

As far as rules for racing, I like using the chase rules but set a round limit on it. So, swoop bike race through the city streets will last say 4 rounds. Then have each round move through a different section of the city. Round 1 - they take off on the highway, 2 sees them turn off on a curvy road introducing some environmental hazards, 3 is twisty alleyways, etc.

They're clunky at first, but the chase rules are fun. The Order 66 podcast did a really good episode on them as well.

Where can I find the Chase rules? I dunno which book they are in.

Just now, GandofGand said:

Where can I find the Chase rules? I dunno which book they are in.

They are in all 3 core books, each time in a large grey box, filling out an entire page, right after the environmental hazards. Page 241 in EotE for example.

Awesome, thanks...don't have my books at work...will have to look into them when I get home.

The core rules are pretty simple, if you're on the ground the default skill use is to make competitive Athletics checks. As you get familiar with the system, you can easily replace Athletics with almost any other skill, including social skills, which makes chases more interesting.

Social Chases...that could be entertaining...and this could be the group to make that happen...8D

Also, where can I find Gambling rules; Fly Casual?

6 minutes ago, GandofGand said:

Social Chases...that could be entertaining...and this could be the group to make that happen...8D

Also, where can I find Gambling rules; Fly Casual?

Fly casual has as well gunslinger and showdown rules, the charmer spec and con jobs and scams plus the gambler spec and gambling rules and encounters. And naturally general for the career all that smuggling stuff as well.

Edited by SEApocalypse

Groovy, got some reading to do!

There are also rules for Sabacc in Suns of Fortune. Useful for one on one games, or where a PC is sitting at a table with several npcs. They also have an interesting swoop gang race modular encounter which I enjoyed.

On 6/4/2017 at 6:05 PM, Mark Caliber said:

Okay, what do you do when they go over the line?

In our last session, one of our newer characters was cornered by a couple of bounty hunters. (1 Nemesis & 3 mooks). The mooks with the Heavy Blasters, couldn't touch this guy, but the Nemesis dropped two missiles on him with a missile launcher . . . and HE SURVIVED!

So, the other players and I are looking at our character sheets and wondering, how . . . ?!?

So I did an audit (informally) and yeah . . . this guy could have enough soak to blow off up to 9 points of damage (If he had the money to buy this stuff, which he doesn't appear to have had - separate issue) between Armor upgrades, Talents (Hired Gun Marauder) and Cybernetics upgrades.

Yeah. He is practically immune to all small arms.

So now what?

I feel your pain, especially if he ended up with Cortosis Armor. I agree with others, though, if he didn't have Cortosis, call BS on him surviving 2 missile hits.

In my game, a player (who didn't start out min-maxed anyway, but just headed that way). He now has soak of 11 (thankfully no cortosis). Started as a Droid Marauder, add laminate armor. Brawn 4, +1 for droid, +2 for laminate +2 enduring from Marauder, +2 enduring from Gunner. We constantly laugh because he suffers from Glitter Boy Syndrome ... He scares everything into targeting him first. He shrugs off pistols with impunity. Rifles can nick him, and I often use any advantages or triumphs to crit him, because he suffers so little damage. Drives me nuts when a pistol hits him for 10 damage and a pair of triumphs, and he is unscathed. I have to get creative with triumphs then.

9 points of soak is one point damage reduction less than our big guy has, before his 5 ranks or so of reflect. ;-)

And you know what?` He is still trivial to shoot down, small arms or big guns alike. Just crit him a few times and he goes down like everyone else or one shot him with an heavy repeater in one go … those E-Webs are scary no matter your soak. And so are missiles btw, especially if you load up anti-person, concussion or anti-vehicle ones, but even anti-armor micro missiles are scary with breach 1 and damage 8, while flechette micro missiles with damage 8, vicious 2 and blast 5 can do a lot of pain as well … ND and DC both page 45 for the different micro-rockets and FC1 Flechette Launcher and portable missiles. Though admittedly those portable missiles do lack in penetration power against heavy armored targets, the plasmas do ok and concussive is still deadly, but fragmentation and incineration missiles are build intentionally to be ineffective against heavy armored infantry units.

But imho it is something to embrace for your players, celebrate that one of the players became so tanky to even take hits with ordnance and still keep going, crush your players later with some weapons build around getting passed that soak value like anti-armor micro missile or a good old sniper rifle with pierce 6, now cortosis can become a little more ugly.

Edited by SEApocalypse
1 hour ago, Edgookin said:

I feel your pain, especially if he ended up with Cortosis Armor. I agree with others, though, if he didn't have Cortosis, call BS on him surviving 2 missile hits.

In my game, a player (who didn't start out min-maxed anyway, but just headed that way). He now has soak of 11 (thankfully no cortosis). Started as a Droid Marauder, add laminate armor. Brawn 4, +1 for droid, +2 for laminate +2 enduring from Marauder, +2 enduring from Gunner. We constantly laugh because he suffers from Glitter Boy Syndrome ... He scares everything into targeting him first. He shrugs off pistols with impunity. Rifles can nick him, and I often use any advantages or triumphs to crit him, because he suffers so little damage. Drives me nuts when a pistol hits him for 10 damage and a pair of triumphs, and he is unscathed. I have to get creative with triumphs then.

Use the pair of triumphs to break his armor, then have other enemies actually get some wounds through his soak.

1 hour ago, GroggyGolem said:

Use the pair of triumphs to break his armor, then have other enemies actually get some wounds through his soak.

Or stun grenades. Don't forget that the Stun quality is unaffected by soak. :D Or have them spend some time where heavy ordnance is illegal. Can he make the stealth checks necessary to hide heavy armor?

12 minutes ago, Genuine said:

Or stun grenades. Don't forget that the Stun quality is unaffected by soak. :D Or have them spend some time where heavy ordnance is illegal. Can he make the stealth checks necessary to hide heavy armor?

Stun Grenades have the Stun Damage quality, which is that their damage only affects strain & is reduced by soak. You are thinking of the active item quality "Stun", that is activated with 2 advantage.

6 hours ago, GroggyGolem said:

Stun Grenades have the Stun Damage quality, which is that their damage only affects strain & is reduced by soak. You are thinking of the active item quality "Stun", that is activated with 2 advantage.

You can build those via the crafting rules. :)

11 hours ago, GroggyGolem said:

Stun Grenades have the Stun Damage quality, which is that their damage only affects strain & is reduced by soak. You are thinking of the active item quality "Stun", that is activated with 2 advantage.

You're right - grenades don't have the stun quality. But there are other weapons with the stun quality. Load up on those and drop the mofo. Or home-build a shock-floor trap like the one where Mira and the wookie duel in KOTOR 2. It would be easy enough to base off the palm stunner (which also may or may not ignore soak).

Edited by Genuine

I'm not needing to know how to take down over-geared folks, just ideas on how to curb the creep.

But I've got enough to go on now, just need to figure out how to calculate odds for betting on racing cause swoop races will be a thing.

19 minutes ago, GandofGand said:

I'm not needing to know how to take down over-geared folks, just ideas on how to curb the creep.

But I've got enough to go on now, just need to figure out how to calculate odds for betting on racing cause swoop races will be a thing.

No worries. I'll PM you my bookies number. :^^:

Lol...yeah I'm fairly bad at math and I need a way to simplify the odds for Swoop Races with some variable outcomes...

So back to my munchkin.

The GM is asking for revised and updated Character Sheets and after review it is clear that the Munchkin's character could not withstand the two missile hits. He flat out cheated!

Yeah, that's the moment they would be asked to kindly leave my game.

46 minutes ago, Mark Caliber said:

So back to my munchkin.

The GM is asking for revised and updated Character Sheets and after review it is clear that the Munchkin's character could not withstand the two missile hits. He flat out cheated!

Did he cheat, or was it an honest mistake? I've had just the opposite problem with one of my players. He got his willpower and cunning confused and was rolling one to few green dice. We all just laughed it off and moved on.

Remember, the primary purpose of the table-top RPG is to have fun. No sense in embarrassing the "cheater" if he just made a mistake.

An "Honest" mistake?

Possibly, but IIRC there were too many "mistakes" for them to be "honest." This player is pretty well versed with the game and is a habitual Munchkin.

Plot wise it just changes the course of the story. So instead of "rescuing" our buddy, we get to deal with the fallout of an ambush and an entrapment for the whole team. In the end, we may prefer this plot thread, but I am a stickler for the rules and if my PC goes down, I'm going to be honest about it.

1 hour ago, Mark Caliber said:

So back to my munchkin.

The GM is asking for revised and updated Character Sheets and after review it is clear that the Munchkin's character could not withstand the two missile hits. He flat out cheated!

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23 hours ago, GandofGand said:

Social Chases...that could be entertaining...and this could be the group to make that happen...8D

For context, my PCs were running from a gang through a ghetto. I had the Enforcer use both Streetwise to find the best way out, and Charm to have someone "remember" him from days-gone-by and promise to point the gang in the other direction; the Engineer rig a quick trap from the litter in the alleys; and the Diplomat to use Leadership to keep the group together and focussed. For the gang, I used Athletics to try to run the PCs down, and Coercion to get the locals to fall back in line and help. Basically, you can use whatever set of opposed skills makes sense in the story.

3 hours ago, GandofGand said:

Lol...yeah I'm fairly bad at math and I need a way to simplify the odds for Swoop Races with some variable outcomes...

Both the Corellian Sector book and the Jewel of Yavin adventure have swoop race rules.