I have an issue that is becoming a bit of an issue for my group. Usually I play with either all role players or all min/maxers (I know they aren't mutually exclusive, but I find players tend to sit on one side of the spectrum or the other).

My current group, which I enjoy greatly, has 1 min/max and the rest are role players. We have a hyper intelligent medic with virtually no combat skill. We have a charismatic rogue with minor combat ability. We have a melee focused tech junky with modest combat ability. Then we have a character that has invested every point they can into the most off the wall powerful combat character they can. We're talking a fist full of dice with 4 yellow, 1 green, and a few blue as a base attack for this character. On top of that, she has a weapon that has autofire and a fairly high base damage and he's modded the heck out of the weapon.

Examples of combat against 5 man squad of stormtroopers. The medic is likely to miss or only do minor damage to 1. The rogue will likely hit, and may kill 1. The tech will probably kill 1, and maybe 2 with a lucky roll. The ace is going to kill all 5 with dice to spare.

In the last adventure I through a creature they were supposed to avoid in their path. It was supposed to scare them off and down another path. It had 10 soak and 40 health. It was dead in 2 rounds with 3 of the characters doing a combined 1 damage.

The other players have plenty to do outside of combat, but in combat, it's gotten silly. The first 3 characters would struggle to take out a single adversary 2 enemy. But the last player is likely to one shot it. It makes combat encounters difficult. If I make it challenging for the min/maxer, the rest of the party can basically be one-shot-killed by an unlucky roll. If I set the challenge to the level of the rest of the party, well, it's not worth even having the encounter. The other players have stopped applying any experience to combat because it's just not worth the investment.

I tried splitting them up, and that worked, but they are difficult to separate and would be difficult to build in narrative reasons for separation every adventure...plus it leaves half the party sitting around waiting their turn. I've thought about destroying or limiting the use of the weapon, but I see that being temporary at best as other autofire weapons would be quickly brought up to speed in power.

Has anyone else dealt with a massive power gap in combat?

The machine gun nests get charged in war. Shoot the F outta her.

Yep, this is actually a fairly common scenario. I've been able to mitigate this by providing encounters with multiple objectives, heavy opposition, environmental factors, and timers. It sounds like a lot to manage but it's really just adding a few considerations. Not everyone's going to be the star in every scene, but everyone should have something to do.

* The min-maxer wants combat. Sure! Easy! Here's 2 groups of 5 minions, now cover your team while they do their thing

* The techie needs to slice the speeder so you can escape with the hostages

* the smooth-talker keeps the hostages in line and calm and occasionally pop a shot to help the tank.

* the medic can treat the wounded. and help the slicer slice

Oh, and the minions will have backup every 1d4 rounds (sooner if someone rolls Threat!) and it's dark, raining, and there's some powerful chemical smell in the air. Let's not forget they're in a crowded part of the city and this shootout has put all the passerbys into a panic.

The easy answer to this is to have a bunch of minions for the majority of the party and toss in a Nemesis for the combat-oriented character. Two things that really mess up a character toting an auto-fire weapon is extreme range and melee. If this individual can shoot so well, have them go up against an adversary 4 wookie marauder or a sniper with a tricked out blaster rifle that reduces ranged:heavy checks by two range bands. IE: Extreme range would be 3 purple.

Another nasty thing you could do is destroy the player's rifle. Despairs can be mean like that. Or have the party taken captive and force them to work without their gear.

I'd be interested to learn how your "Honeypot" player gets multiple boost die for her attacks. Do the PC's spend advantage and collectively give her all the boost die? Or does she have some talents or abilities that stack and provide it? I was under the impression only things like taking aim, assistance from other PC's, or perhaps a superior firing position grant a boost die.

43 minutes ago, KamaKrazyWarBoy said:

I'd be interested to learn how your "Honeypot" player gets multiple boost die for her attacks. Do the PC's spend advantage and collectively give her all the boost die? Or does she have some talents or abilities that stack and provide it? I was under the impression only things like taking aim, assistance from other PC's, or perhaps a superior firing position grant a boost die.

A weapon's Accuracy rating adds boost dice. Even with Accuracy 1, my Diplomat player untrained with AG 2 can get 3 boost dice by aiming twice. Sounds like the OP's player is a "stand and take it" kind of guy, so at minimum he's getting 2 boost dice before any talents, situational, or equipment mods.

I don't see it as an inherent problem that one character is good at combat as long as the other characters have their own specialization. It's always a bit odd to me that "Argh! The combat character demolished my combat encounter!" comes up but you only occasionally see "Argh! The social character demolished my social encounter!" and when a medic, scout, etc, does the same thing to the carefully designed scenario related to their field? Oh, no problem there!

Let them do their thing. It won't solve every challenge that they're dealing with and knowing that a tough opponent isn't going to stop them just means that you don't use a tough opponent to stop them. Mr. Combat may one-shot a rancor but they aren't going to one-shot the avalanche blocking the path, etc.

2 hours ago, kmanweiss said:

Has anyone else dealt with a massive power gap in combat?

There are good suggestions here, and it's important to shake things up by forcing the PC into different environments. If you swarm her in combat she can't use her weapon as effectively (be sure to apply those extra difficulty dice for shooting while in melee). If you introduce difficult terrain her movement is hampered and she can't back off and get range. Apply any threat she generates as setbacks, or boosts the enemy gets as setbacks. Introduce enemies that immobilize, such as semi-sentient tree octopi, or a stormtrooper with a glop gun. Have the enemy take valued people (other PCs, or NPCs) hostage and imposing massive consequences if they "shoot anyway". And make sure you're flipping DP to increase that chance of despair.

All that said, it's a lot of extra work just to accommodate one PC, and ultimately the problem is going to persist. You can help the other team-mates be more effective in combat, e.g. letting them "find" Accurate weapons which helps the least effective shooters, or giving them equipment like grenade launchers and stun nets. This would help level the damage output, but you'll then have to up the challenge level overall. The other option is just tell the player it's a problem and you'll have to find some compromise. Maybe let them drop a couple skill dice and use the XP for something else.

On that note, how is their Discipline? Have you tested their Fear? If she's a complete shooter but can't keep her Cool, is blissfully unaware (Vigilance), and can't trek across a jungle without becoming exhausted and slowing everyone down (Resilience, Survival), then you need to include these kinds of checks on a more frequent basis so the players start applying XP to them. There are no dump skills, and if the players think there are, it's one of the joys of being a GM to re-educate them

So your tank should honestly be getting some rep here do to their extreme combat ability. Stories of their prowess which means that anyone who finds out they're going against the group will be likely to send someone who can deal with the threat. Also with someone like that it's very likely that they can be easily mentally manipulated so send a tricky force user to play some mind games with them to maybe turn them against the party.

Or do to their extreme prowess this rep of theirs makes certain things harder for characters in social encounters just do to that PCs presence.

11 hours ago, kmanweiss said:

Has anyone else dealt with a massive power gap in combat?

My pilot started without even having a gun. He literally refused to wield one and so was his astromech droid.
This effectively meant for the GM that she had to come up with other stuff beside personal scale combat encounters to involve us two. Which included air support for the imperial, us giving air support to our infantry guys (we play AoR with specs from all three lines), and dealing with players who consider entering a building by blasting away multiple storey to get rid of reinforcement forces while the commando group is grabbing the target person with an infiltration mission through the ventilation systems.

Getting back to your question: Embrace the characters and their "non-combat" abilities. Give them something to do. A kick *** medic will love to actually heal some people, people who now can help the group with their next combat encounter, explosives are a int-based ability, can't be that hard to place a few Detonite charges if you are a genious, right? Charismatic rogues can turn enemies to your side, because why should those henchmen keep working for the Gouverneur, when chances of survival are so much better with this grinning fool his grim bastard friend with the repeating blaster. And that tech junky? Guess what, he can not only place charges as well, but he can take over computer and security systems or bring droids to battle, etc

The whole adventure design should offer all characters involved reasons and means to progress the story. If only one guy build for standard combat, this is a clear sign that simple combat encounter should not be the main focus and your min/maxing combat monster is actually a good tool to achieve this, because he will keep combat encounters brief … and in those encounters in which he can not do this, make sure to have enough tools and opportunities ready for the other characters to flex their muscles. As others have said, those encounters can offer multiple side-objectives to help with the main objective of survival the battle.

10 hours ago, Garran said:

I don't see it as an inherent problem that one character is good at combat as long as the other characters have their own specialization. It's always a bit odd to me that "Argh! The combat character demolished my combat encounter!" comes up but you only occasionally see "Argh! The social character demolished my social encounter!" and when a medic, scout, etc, does the same thing to the carefully designed scenario related to their field? Oh, no problem there!

Let them do their thing. It won't solve every challenge that they're dealing with and knowing that a tough opponent isn't going to stop them just means that you don't use a tough opponent to stop them. Mr. Combat may one-shot a rancor but they aren't going to one-shot the avalanche blocking the path, etc.

This, a million friggin times THIS. A combat character is SUPPOSED to demolish combat, but combat isn't the be-all end-all in Star Wars. This isn't D&D where the goal is to dungeon crawl (at least not always). Shooting twenty Stormtroopers in one turn is amazing, but won't get that door open to flee before thirty more show up. That's what the Slicer does. And having the biggest gun won't do you much good without someone that can lie and smuggle said gun into town when you need to visit a civilized world.

But let's say you really, REALLY need to raise the stakes in a fight. Those situations happen and can be hard to create with a combat monster. Let's say this is a final fight against some pirate captain on a corvette that is getting bombarded by other ships - they need to kill or capture him and then GTFO before the ship explodes.

Firstly, this Nemesis has Adversary 3 or 4 at least. Give him two Rivals with Adversary 1-2 as his lieutenants. Then add 2-3 minion groups of 5. Every time a minion group is defeated, wait 1d4 rounds for a new one to show up (not endlessly or things get silly). Now your Autofire guy has to make a choice. Focus the Rivals and be unable to allocate hits to the Big Bad? Mow down the minions? Shoot at the Nemesis and accept that he'll have (on average) way less Advantage and can't Autofire the whole room? Then, give the rest of the party things to do. Fight is happening in a hangar, so the Slicer can jack into a crane and swing a giant box as a weapon. Boom, entire minion group eliminated. Roll a Triumph on it and you crit a Rival, too. The medic will be plenty busy trying to keep your party fighting. Does he have Stim Application yet? Because NOW is the time where the big gun wielding min-maxer needs that Agility boost through drugs. Finding something for the face to do is harder but not impossible. Maybe he can com those attacking the corvette and tell them to focus their fire on the side of the hangar where the pirate and his men are taking cover - they get a few Setback to their shots for that, while your guys might get Boosts from suddenly having solid ground and being able to take easier aim at people stumbling about. Once more, Triumphs might mean a few well-placed explosions that can deal some crits.

On 30.6.2017 at 0:46 AM, Garran said:

Mr. Combat may one-shot a rancor but they aren't going to one-shot the avalanche blocking the path, etc.

I think this is a good start to actually gather stuff that Mr. Combat is not going to one-shot, including with solutions what kind of character will one-shot it.

• Mr. Combat ain't going to one-shot that walker reinforcements coming your way, while Mr. Technician might have a chance to just jam communications before any reinforcements can be called in.
• Mr. Combat ain't going to one-shot that door in your way, while the slicer just cracks it and the mechanic just opens an pannel and rewires the door controls. No sweat.
• Mr. Combat might one-shot the group's escape vehicle, but he most certainly will not get it back alive in time again. The groups mechanic at the other hand has an easy time to get this old piece of junk going again.
• Mr. Combat is not one-shotting that prison cell either, while Mr. Charmer has a clear business proposition for those guards which they agree to take.
• Mr. Combat is not one-shotting an entire garrison of the emperor's best stormtroopers in their fortified base. Mr. Dashing Rogue might lure them out where the furry army of Ms. Ambassador is already waiting for them. Hurray for Leadership and Deception rolls.
• Mir. Combat is not planting those explosives which blow up the death star either. (It was an inside job. Wake up you fools!)

I am sure you guys come up with even more awesome examples.

Thank you all! I've skimmed over this and will definitely read it in detail later.

Some additional info. As for the bonuses... The character gets some accuracy from the weapon which of course is going to roll into autofire triggers. Aim and double aim gets blue dice. The other characters typically have at least 1 blue die to pass, and they'll go first in order to pass that advantage. On top of that there is some pierce built into the weapon, and he has true aim. All in all he throws a fist full of dice and has other bonuses. The character also has spare clip so just killing off his ability to shoot is nearly impossible that way.

I know that combat isn't the end-all be-all of Star Wars. But it's fun, and I'm afraid the other players are missing out because they can't really participate much. They have plenty to do besides combat, and combat only comes up maybe once or twice a session. The combat character is usually the least active character because she's so combat focused that she has no other skills.

This system ramps up offense fast without really adding to defense...not an issue if people are on par with each other. But as I said, if I throw a challenge to the combat specialist, it'll wipe the rest of the group. And unlike in other systems, combat power isn't forced to progress over time.

The entertaining part for me is while these are all experienced players with literally decades of gaming experience, their characters bumble through everything. Example: Storming and enemy hanger. 1 big bad stands to fight along with 2 minion groups. Another big bad boards and tries to depart in a ship. So I expect the gunner to take on the enemies while the others attempt to stop the shuttle. They could try to disable the engines, board the shuttle, close the hanger doors. The gunner board the shuttle (doh), the tech closes the hanger doors. The pilot, now distracted doesn't notices the doors and shears off the wings crashing the ship on the tarmac. The other three nearly die to the threat that was designed for the gunner. I had created some other possibilities for the hanger combat (cranes, droids, etc) but when they were totally outgunned, they weren't willing to get creative and just tried to fight it out.

If I do weak minions and a strong adversary, the gunner goes for the minions. If I go weak adversary and strong minions, the gunner goes for the adversary. However I plan it to make the most of their abilities, they somehow bumble into the worst possible solution. They try to talk their way out of fights that I don't want them to, and then they start fights with people that aren't even hostile towards them because they suspect something that isn't true.

Again, thank you for the advice! I'm already thinking of some interesting situations to throw at them.

You need to have objectives that can't be solved by shooting it in the face with a blaster.

A perfect example is the bunker fight on Endor in RotJ. The goal is to slice open the door to get inside and plant the explosives. The battle raging outside is simply the obstacle to accomplishing that goal.

So what does that PC party do? One starts working a Mechanics check to try and hotwire it, the social character starts doing Perception checks to help them avoid threats (adding boost die to the royalty character who is firing at minions that gets in close). Their combat monkey? He runs off and carjacks a walker, and uses it to start stomping his way around the battlefield, causing massive destruction. They were all doing something , but only 1 was really doing the "shoot them in the face" thing, everyone else had other things to accomplish.

That's what you need to do. Give the medic some NPC's to heal up and defend while they're being shot at (the finale of the movie Serenity is a good example of this), give the rogue something to sneak up to while everyone else is fighting, to help tip the balance of power in the fight. (If they can get to this one control panel without being seen, they can activate the auto load-lifters, and maybe grab that speeder, taking it out of the fight with it's magnetic plate. The tech junky could spot an old hulk of a combat droid nearby, or perhaps an old speeder, and hotwire it to get them out of combat quickly, or give them some extra firepower on their side.

Basically, if the majority of your party isn't combat focused, don't make every encounter simply a combat encounter. You are basically making entire situations, tailor made for only 25% of your party. So of course the other 75% feel inadequate, because you only have things to shoot. Give them other things to do in the scenes to help the combat effort.

Insert environmental hazards that can only be removed, by someone turning them off (allowing the rogue, or tech junky a chance to use their talents to help). Have the combat take place on a ship, that is plummeting out of the atmosphere towards the surface, and the tech has to get it running again so they don't crash. While he's doing this, the combat monkey can be fighting off whatever, holding the line.

Stuff like that.

3 hours ago, kmanweiss said:

The combat character is usually the least active character because she's so combat focused that she has no other skills.

There's nothing more ridiculous than a big bad warrior who cringes at is rattled at the first sign of combat...which is basically what would be happening if there were appropriate Fear checks. That, and others like it, are really key mechanics in this game.

5 hours ago, whafrog said:

There's nothing more ridiculous than a big bad warrior who cringes at is rattled at the first sign of combat...which is basically what would be happening if there were appropriate Fear checks. That, and others like it, are really key mechanics in this game.

Our combat monkeys tend to be jedis and other force sensitives. Their discipline skills are usually decent enough. Meanwhile my pilot is hiding behind the bar counter already during a fist fight … and in space combat, the odds are always in his favor, so no fear checks ;-)
Either way, those extra xp for discipline should be in any combat monkey build, jedi or not. It not like it is expensive either, 50xp or at worst 70xp for rank 4.

I find splitting the party, and having the combat monkey being the one stuck doing stuff like babysitting the diplomats pre-teen child, works really well to show them just how single-minded they are.

I haven't found fear checks to be all that debilitating in this system. Fear 3 vs Willpower 2/Discipline 1 only resulted in a short-term Setback, and Fear 3 isn't really all that common,

Two words: Social. Encounter.
Years ago, I ran an RPG with a bunch of people who were more concerned with combat than anything else. Their combat statistics would have made SEAL Team Six look like a bunch of weekend-warrior paintballers. Then came the part of the module where they had to 'blend in' to an Embassy Ball, charm/fast talk a few diplomats, and generally avoid making an international faux pas.... Characters that could level legions on a roll of 4 or better, and end continents with a roll of 5 or better suddenly had to roll 19's and 20's to avoid bungling social niceties and getting themselves into very hot water.
Your rabid combat machine may be able to outfight anything in the galaxy, so put him in situations where quick wit is more important than a quick draw.

I will reiterate: I don't agree with the "teach them a lesson!" mentality that many of the other posters here are expressing. The answer is not to passive-aggressively 'punish' the player/character for being good at something (combat or otherwise) by constantly sticking them into situations that they can't cope with. It's to make sure that storylines give all of the characters opportunities to show off how awesome they are at their particular thing (combat or otherwise). Social encounters are there to make the social character look awesome, not to make the combat character look stupid.

15 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

I haven't found fear checks to be all that debilitating in this system. Fear 3 vs Willpower 2/Discipline 1 only resulted in a short-term Setback, and Fear 3 isn't really all that common,

Fear 3 is just a moderate threat to someone's life. Even something as "harmless" as an Inquisitor should usually top this. Heck even just storming an E-Web placement should top this even when in reality the characters are perfectly save mechanically thanks to their squad rules plot shields.
And if we get in this unlucky thing of walker or air supporter for infantry battles, we can quickly get into formidable territory. (Hello Hoth)

Though even just a hard check is more than enough to occasional stagger some weak minded combat monkey (Willpower 2/ Discipline ~13% chance;

And getting one or two upgrades for the check is not that special either, imperial intelligence, aces, bounty hunter, etc with reputation, etc you get the drift, one or two upgrades are easy enough. Just two reds give you already 1 in 7 chance for that sweet little despair.

It does not destroy builds, but it makes things more interesting imho.

2 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Fear 3 is just a moderate threat to someone's life.

Be careful not to needlessly inflate Difficulty numbers.

When you look at the whole section in F&D on Fear it can be spooled up to be a major PITA in PCs @$$es. The Setback for failing is a minimum result, with total net failures equaling Strain suffered. 3 uncanceled Threat and the PC is Staggered, that's pretty dangerous. A Despair and all check's Difficulty for the entire encounter are increased by one, that's awful. The Difficulty of the check, depending on circumstances, can be pretty crazy for anyone just rolling against it without a great Discipline or a PC along that has the various Talents for mitigating the roll/results.

Take the OPs big mean monster he wanted them to avoid, sounds like a base Daunting for Difficulty, and of course it's the Dread Purple People Eater, so that's worth a couple upgrades to the Difficulty, then there's the fact they're in the middle of no where without any hope of help, Setback, no way to outrun it if things go bad, Setback, only one PC that can hurt it and if they go down everyone else is PPE poop, Setback. Could be a pretty ugly Fear check for out heroes.....

Quote

Very Afraid (Hard Discipline check) : Battlefield combat; a pack of aggressive creatures; a major threat to one's safety and moderate fear for one's life.

That is kind of standard in AoR campaigns, it is kind of standard in Force and Destiny when you are on the run from the Empire. It might be a little less common in Edge of Empire.
Besides, it works the other way around as well, when you are not even giving out hard checks on regular base to a group than there is little reason to ever get much more than 3 dice for most tasks. And hard is a pretty common difficulty for opposed checks as well.

12 hours ago, Garran said:

I will reiterate: I don't agree with the "teach them a lesson!" mentality that many of the other posters here are expressing. The answer is not to passive-aggressively 'punish' the player/character for being good at something (combat or otherwise) by constantly sticking them into situations that they can't cope with. It's to make sure that storylines give all of the characters opportunities to show off how awesome they are at their particular thing (combat or otherwise). Social encounters are there to make the social character look awesome, not to make the combat character look stupid.

You're missing the point. Agreed, the answer is not to make the character look stupid, but that's not what's being suggested. As much as the GM has an obligation to provide a scenario that allows the characters to shine, the players have an obligation to both be a little more interesting than a one-trick pony, and to help not be a drag on the team. It sounds to me like the player in the OP isn't meeting either of those.

And I disagree that "social encounters are there to make the social character look awesome". The point of a social encounter, like any encounter, is to further the story, and creative players will meet the challenge with more than one tool in their tool box. It's far more interesting to get narrative solutions to a problem that involve *all* the players, than just sitting back and throwing the highest dice pool at it.

Lastly, if you never test PCs outside their core capabilities, you really limit the number and type of scenarios you can throw at them. If nobody took Survival, by your criteria you'd never have a wilderness adventure. Seems kind of limiting.