On 6/6/2017 at 6:26 PM, DaverWattra said:

On the contrary, I think it's still worse than Parry and Reflect (which you do want to use every single time IMO except in weird circumstances or when you're running low on strain). Also, there are plenty of talents that you want to use every single turn that you can use them--True Aim? Intuitive Shot? All the talents that add Force dice to your lightsaber attacks (Draw Closer, Hawkbat Swoop, etc)?

Parry and Reflect are used on a per-attack basis, which means that they have a cost every time they're used. The same goes for Dodge. Yeah, you want to use them if you have Strain to spare, but it is a cost to be considered.

But your proposal is to have it last an entire encounter, for a single expenditure of strain and a maneuver. And this is at the beginning of the encounter, when you've probably got a fair bit of strain left. So yes, pop that sucker every single time.

Now, I'll admit that I often find Sidestep and Defensive Stance to be a bit underwhelming. Thrown on to a random character, they would be pretty lousy. But they're frequently found two-to-a-tree, and in trees that would make good use of them. An Infiltrator wants to get up-close and personal, going to town with his Melee skill. Once he does so, two red dice to hit him are nothing to sniff at. It's going to be real handy for preventing crits, because if those red dice aren't rolling Failure (which can prevent the hit in the first place), they're almost certainly rolling Threat. If you also have a rank or two in Dodge (ooh, how nice, Infiltrator has two of those as well!), you're going to ruin someone's day.

On 2017-6-5 at 9:52 PM, DaverWattra said:

As I've pointed out in a previous thread, Side Step and Defensive Stance are bad enough that they aren't really worth using. The benefit is not that great unless you have a huge number of ranks (since upgrading dice does less to keep you from getting hit or critted than adding black dice), and the price is high: you spend strain *and* a valuable maneuver. Most of the time I'd rather spend a maneuver taking a guarded stance than using Defensive Stance.

Here's how I would house rule them in order to make them worthwhile:

And same for Defensive Stance except with melee attacks.

I think this change makes Side Step and Defensive Stance about on a par with Dodge in terms of usefulness. Thoughts?

For the record difficulty of 2 yellow 2 green at medium range (nte that these are the chances of the roll having these results not how much. This is also good for melee chances as well.

Without boost 80% of success/62% advantage/0% Despair

With guarded stance 73%/54% advantage/24% threat

With single upgrade 75%/64% advantage/8.5% despair/17% threat

With double upgrade 69%/65% advantage/16% despair/16% threat

With triple upgrade 59%/50% advantage/16% despair/30% threat

with quadruple upgrade 53%/51% advantage/23% despair/30% threat

Now moving to short range

normal 89% success/79% advantage /6% threat

Guarded stance doesnt hep for ranged (although you could go prone but that defeats the purpose since the problem is with movement, going prone means you cant move, but I will include, cover is the same as you cannot move)

with boost 83% success /71 % advantage/ 11% threat

with single upgrade 85% success/80% advantage/ 6% threat /8.5% despair

with double upgrade 74% succes/64% advantage/17% threat/8.5% despair

with triple 69% success/66% advantage/17% threat/16% despair

with quadruple 59% success/49% advantage/30% threat/16% despair

So as soon as you get two ranks, you have at least a 4 % better chance to miss with a melee or medium range attack and you also have about a 1 in 6 chance of your opponent rolling a despair on top regardless of the result. If it starts as a 1 purple check you only have a 1 in 12 of a despair but the trade off is you have a 9% better chance of a miss.

So guarded stance vs defensive stance rank 1 , has 2% better chance of a miss, 10% less chance of advantage rolled, and defensive stance has 1 in 12 chance of rolling a despair.

So breaking that down using guarded stance will

1/ get you hit 1 times less out of 50 attacks in comparison with defensive stance rank 1

2/ will get you 1 times out of 10 out of having advantage rolled against you in comparison with defensive stance rank 1

3/ Defensive Stance will 1 times out of 12 cause a despair in comparison with guarded stance

So I would say that they are fairly close to even here (note that you can take both to get the advantages of both), although guarded stance I would say is still a clear winner here but not significantly, some players might prefer a higher chance of being hit for a slightly lesser chance of a despair rolled. Guarded stance doesnt cost strain which is why Id say its the winner.

Regardless of the circumstances though as soon as you get 2 ranks there is no competition in the results. This doesn't make one rank useless as noted you can stack both or you may want despair (improved parry / reflect/ overbalance etc).

So given all that I dont think its underpowered and about the only tweak I would recommend is to reduce the strain cost by 1 , so rank 1/is free, rank 2/ costs 1 etc, this puts rank 1 more in line with guarded stance which would then have the same pre-requisite for a similar pay off. Although IMO 1 strain isnt going to make a masive difference to it, if you think the maneuver is that important this isnt going to change your opinion on using rhese defensive talents, in which case go for a specialization that is more mobile as these talents use dodge as their mainstay defensive talent as it should be.

The specs with side step are those that tend to be less mobile and fight from a distance, and if the opponents close should look to hobble them with called shots, so that they can stay at range, if they are getting shot at, where side step is usdful then the opponent isnt closing with them

The specs with defensive stance are those that fight in melee, mobility isnt the issue, they want to be in melee range and if the opponent is running then they dont need defensive stance

The specs with dodge are the ones that tend to be more mobile , this mobility comes at a cost. lots of strain

The PCs with sense are force sensitive and any dice committed cannot be used on offense, worse than side step /Defensive stance , it costs an action to activate , losing the PC an important attack, Once on is always on but is limited to two upgrades on two attacks, even if that attack is kid throwing a stone. The PC with 2 Fr can upgrade their attacks also but this costs a second action. They also pay out XP to be force sensitve and do not get as many career skills. As a result of this it has a negative effect on future xp and also the committed dice lower their ability with their other force powers.

If the players find that using side step results in them getting swamped in melee they need to use their tactics to get things working in their favor, flip a DP or use a triumph to insert rough terrain between them and their opponents meaning it takes double the time, called shot the legs to hobble the opponent, all these are tactics a PC and a GM can use to add time before the melee boys get close enough that side effect becomes a problem, after all combat doesnt often start at engaged range.

Melee combatants have it slightly different because if you have two opponents wanting to duke it out with vibroswords then both are likely to want to stay in engaged range so both would want to use defensive stance /guarded stance, if the opponent is running, again they dont need to waste the maneuver(s).

Sorry for the long post.

Edit just thought I'd point out that each rank gives either differences of an additional 6% chance to miss with an approx 8% increase in the chance of despair(when upgrading purple to red) , or an additonal 10% chance of a miss along with an additional 13% chance of threat (when adding a purple),

So for reference adding a red (not upgrading a purple to a red) will give an increase of 16% chance of a miss , 10% chance increase of getting threat and 8% increase to despair

adding a setback adds an equal additional 6% increase to the chance of a miss and of the chance of threat.

these are rough figures but do give you an idea of how effective they are.

23 hours ago, EliasWindrider said:

The prohibitive cost of sidestep and defensive stance is the maneuver, because it either means you can't attack or can't move without spending 2 strain (or 2 advantage) so the real cost, for most builds is ranks + 2 strain, and you commit to spending that on your turn, i.e. before you know you will be attacked with the particular attack type, they also work against a single attack type, but they work against all (possibly zero) attacks until your next turn.

Umm.. isn't attacking an Action?

In regards to the OP, I don't think any fix is needed. The Talents are plenty powerful enough when you have two or more ranks in it and to use some of the suggested fixes would require a change from ranked talent to non-ranked talent. That presents problems since there are several specs across all three lines that have multiple instances and thus negate the expenditure of the appropriate XP. I'm sorry but this is very power-gamey to me.

1 minute ago, Oden Gebhac said:

Umm.. isn't attacking an Action?

In regards to the OP, I don't think any fix is needed. The Talents are plenty powerful enough when you have two or more ranks in it and to use some of the suggested fixes would require a change from ranked talent to non-ranked talent. That presents problems since there are several specs across all three lines that have multiple instances and thus negate the expenditure of the appropriate XP. I'm sorry but this is very power-gamey to me.

You can also use your action to move, and if you use it to move, you can't also use it to attack

1 minute ago, EliasWindrider said:

You can also use your action to move, and if you use it to move, you can't also use it to attack

This is true. I must have interpreted your wording to mean something else.

1 hour ago, EliasWindrider said:

You can also use your action to move, and if you use it to move, you can't also use it to attack

Well technically, you dont use your action to move , the option is there to downgrade it to a maneuver, which you can then use to move. I know it's splitting hairs, but you can't do a move maneuver during an action. An important distinction.

My experience with them is that they're really good when facing lots of low-threat opponents. Upgrading allows you to run them out of ammo and/or weapons. Sure, one rank's not a big deal... two is worthy. Four is a 30% chance of disaster for the NPCs... My players never really objected to the strain cost.

Sounds like the OP is focused on a few high value threats; i've often had players facing many low threat foes, instead. And there, as written, it's worthy.

19 hours ago, AK_Aramis said:

My experience with them is that they're really good when facing lots of low-threat opponents. Upgrading allows you to run them out of ammo and/or weapons. Sure, one rank's not a big deal... two is worthy. Four is a 30% chance of disaster for the NPCs... My players never really objected to the strain cost.

Sounds like the OP is focused on a few high value threats; i've often had players facing many low threat foes, instead. And there, as written, it's worthy.

This is pretty key. When you're facing five groups of space pirate minions with blasters, that's when it's time for the hulking brute with the repeating blaster to step out of cover, activate sidestep, and start spraying the area with blaster fire while his friends hide behind crates. Suddenly everyone is shooting at him. Yeah, he's gonna get hit, but with any luck he's also going to cause those pirates to generate a lot of Threat. "Oh, that group hit me but rolled a bunch of Threat? I'll spend those as Strain, which to them are wounds, so one of them catches one of my blaster shots and goes down."

Defense in this game can translate to offense very quickly, and it can be used to take down tough enemies. Consider Stormtroopers. At 5 soak, trying to take them down without rifles can be hard. Go check out Chirrut Imwe's fight with the Stormtroopers on YouTube. If we wanted to put that into game terms, Chirrut's player could say, "Okay, I'm Engaged with the Stormtroopers, so I want to make a Brawl attack (I know he's using a staff, but that can provide Melee Defense while he rolls Brawl) ... I succeed with Advantage. So I only do a couple points of damage, but I also trigger Knockdown, so they can't Disengage without sacrificing their action. Then for my maneuver, I activate Sidestep. Can I spend even more advantage to use a guy as cover and make myself harder to hit?"

The GM says, "Okay, sure. It looks really impressive, and you knock these guys around, but they quickly begin picking themselves up off the ground and start shooting at you. So, difficulty of one..."

"Hold on. They're Engaged with Blaster Rifles, so it's difficulty three. Also, they're shooting into melee, so it's upgraded once. I also triggered Sidestep, so that's two more upgrades. Now they're shooting at three reds, plus that black for cover."

"Huh... Okay, part of me wants to argue with you, but that's pretty badass. So they roll... a failure, a bunch of Threat, and Despair. Apparently you found weak points in their armor for the pummeling, and you got some of them to shoot each other."

I have a house rule that I use that makes these talents somewhat more valuable. I allow Side Step, Defensive Stance, Dodge, Sense upgrades, and the Adversary talent (anything that upgrades difficulty) to increase the number of advantage needed to activate auto-fire, two weapon fighting, or linked (essentially anything that spends advantage to get extra hits).

So Adversaries are always harder to gun down with a machine gun than mooks and a PC can likewise keep themselves from getting destroyed with multiple hits by using these talents.

The per shot strain cost for Dodge is the balancing factor to me. I've seen this be the single biggest strain drain a PC faces.