Hi Everyone

Talking about very powerful Force Move Throw alpha attack, it sorted out there are several ways to do a massive damage to a PC with a single skill roll. I'm not complaining about the Force Move power, or a single build, but there are several ways to do a massive damage (ie 20+) with a single shot to any PC, effectively putting him out of action. And that could be ok if they do something wrong, if they do chase a big villain without any backup, or if during a fight they give bad decision and assault what they can't and get pwned; but is really not funny if at the start of the "big boss final battle" at the end of a long 5+ session adventure arc one of them get a direct hit and goes down, feeling completely useless and stopped playing until the end of the battle (and that could be also an hour because fight against big fella tends to be long)

I'm not complaining about NPC; minions and rivals really i don't care and so low-levels nemesis, and high level big bad nemeses can plan trap, shoot from long distance, having a minion-squad-armor to protect them, etc. Also, for NPC i don't care much if they don't get fun

The problem is, with increased experience the players get they gain some nice advantage, weapons, equip, etc and also bigger villains; a good rival is enough for a low level char, a nemeses for a knight level, but a big bad boss with 3-5 yellow dice to specific skills is what high level char face. So a PPP or RPP difficult to hit is going to be less relevant as the PC's exp increase. But they tend to be in the 15-20 WT values.
So a Sil2-3 boulder thrown at them, a direct hit from a big rifle, or a solid blast from a speeder cannon, all of them can put the PC incapacitated and useless and he can't react, can't do anything. So long, the cinematic game play is just becoming a rush to whoever wins the initiative.

For ship combat is different; first, if you goes over HT the ship is useless BUT can do a mechanics roll to start engine again. Sure it has some penalities and also get a critical hit +30 everytime is hit again, but still can do something. Also, there is nothing doing 20, 30 or 50 damage to a ship with a single shot (unless you rush with a single fighter to a storming line of ISD but that's your fault... also you can survive using some maneuver/action/nice talent)

So i'm guessing if is worth give PC (and very powerful boss like PC) a chance to do something even if incapacitated by massive damage.
I.e. if after accumulated more wound than WT they did'nt goes down incapacitated, but giving them a way to act. Some ideas:
- the PC make a Discipline or Resilience roll (difficulties based on damage taken by the last shot). Success means he can act for some rounds (based on advantage/success?)
- the PC make a Discipline or Resilience roll every round; if successfull can act freely
- the PC is staggered or immobilized, his choice (he can either move or act, not both)
- the PC is disoriented X times untile goes under WT (where X is like 1 + 1/10 wound over WT)
- the PC still get a unmodified Critical Hit every round he act/move, if he choose to act/move
- the PC can't do anything apart from silly things like using a stimpack readied, shoot (with penalities) with a readied weapon, reach for a stimpack from backpack, crawl behind cover, flip a switch, and of course the evergreen "yell for help"

However, if they get hit they still take critical hit (and damage) with increasing +10 every time they get hit, so in the long run they will be heavily impaired (several black dice and/or upgrade difficulties and also the fear of a painful death)

This will make the big boss finale fight a bit longer, but does'nt really change the dynamics of standard fight, but limit the situation where a single good roll can render useless the PC for a big part of the action...

What do you think?

15 Damage are just 5 Maneuvers worth in Stimpacks (5+4+3+2+1). Going down in a single hit, you most likely are back in the action within a single turn, especially if someone applies a full medicine check on top to a stimpack use. Now I most certainly would not carry my emergency stimpacks in a backpack, they fit just fine readily avaible onto a belt or into a pocket even when mechanically both should be just one maneuver to draw them. ;-)

Furthermore decent soak values can already negate a lot incoming damage, parry & reflect, automatic stimpack injectors as armor mod and talents are all options to keep you going even after someone was throwing a small shuttle in your face. Talents can do the same, stuff like Unmatched Protection, Unmatched Heroism, Circle of Shelter, Improved Body Guard, etc … so the system has a good amount of tools to protect squishies from those high damage spikes, usually at the cost of lots of strain on the "tanks" of the group.

Example:
A darksider is throwing a TIE-Fighter onto a PC groups pilot (Han). The wookie marauder/bodyguard triggers unmatched protection, shoves Han away, takes a 30 damage hit, reduces this to 15 damage with his talent, and further 12 points by his soak value. Leaving him mildly angry when he raises from the wreckage of that TIE-Fighter and starting to run towards that inquisitor with his vibro axe …

… meanwhile at some other place in the galaxy, a group of rebels and force sensitives is storming an imperial e-web nest. Once again a poor pilot is the target of the attack. Let's call this Verpine Pilot Klack'o, the imperials manage to not only score a hit, but actually 3, each hit comes in for 20 damage. The protector in the group triggers improved bodyguard AND circle of shelter, triggering for both shots aswell his 5 ranks of reflect, reducing damage he takes after soak to merely 5 damage und keeps running. He also takes the second hit, but with 5 ranks of reflect, means another 8 damage for him. Meanwhile poor Klack'o takes the last hit for 20 damage minus his poor soak of 5. He also keeps running as from behind he feels the soft touch of the group's healer who already negated 10 wounds with her heal power. The protector still decides to use Protect on Klack'o in his turn, just in case his Pilot keeps being as lucky as usual.

There really are plenty of skills, powers and talents to overcome heavy hitters, alas they require already a group setup to deal with them. When in doubt, the squad rules always come to the rescue. ;-)


And nearly off-topic:
FFG should really release an errata and give that **** bodyguard spec the improved bodyguard talent.

I've been leaning towards Discipline/Resilience to keep going without restrictions, otherwise there could be setback or difficulty upgrades applied, and/or the loss of the free Maneuver (they can still downgrade their Action).

With GeneSyst coming I was thinking more along the lines of letting players and NPCs decide to bleed out faster and apply 1 critical wound for each round they keep going beyond their WT. Loss of the free maneuver on top sounds good as well. That is how I would handle it if I rewrite the system into my own version of narrative dice, but in that case I would remove all the talents as well.

As shown in my first post, there are plenty of talents which attack the issue at hand from a different angle.

I sort of wish they didn't have hit points at all, which is all Wounds really are. I prefer the idea of Wounds counting up that slowly debilitate, but never really take away player agency in the form of incapacitation (unless it's dramatically appropriate).

6 hours ago, whafrog said:

I sort of wish they didn't have hit points at all, which is all Wounds really are. I prefer the idea of Wounds counting up that slowly debilitate, but never really take away player agency in the form of incapacitation (unless it's dramatically appropriate).

It does seem weird, upon reflection (and after playing this game for years) that there are two thresholds that, when reached, can incapacitate you. What about keeping the WT, but justing removing the incapacitation effect from it? Then instead, give them an automatic critical injury when the WT is surpassed, and then another automatic critical injury any time they suffer more damage exceeding soak.

6 hours ago, whafrog said:

I sort of wish they didn't have hit points at all, which is all Wounds really are. I prefer the idea of Wounds counting up that slowly debilitate, but never really take away player agency in the form of incapacitation (unless it's dramatically appropriate).

Can I like this more than once?

16 minutes ago, awayputurwpn said:

It does seem weird, upon reflection (and after playing this game for years) that there are two thresholds that, when reached, can incapacitate you. What about keeping the WT, but justing removing the incapacitation effect from it? Then instead, give them an automatic critical injury when the WT is surpassed, and then another automatic critical injury any time they suffer more damage exceeding soak.

I think this is a pretty good idea for a patch. It makes it so that lower soak builds arent just out of the fight in one or two hits with the combat monster going on for 20 hits.

3 minutes ago, korjik said:

I think this is a pretty good idea for a patch. It makes it so that lower soak builds arent just out of the fight in one or two hits with the combat monster going on for 20 hits.

I smell another PvP battle royale to test this out.....any takers?

17 minutes ago, awayputurwpn said:

It does seem weird, upon reflection (and after playing this game for years) that there are two thresholds that, when reached, can incapacitate you. What about keeping the WT, but justing removing the incapacitation effect from it? Then instead, give them an automatic critical injury when the WT is surpassed, and then another automatic critical injury any time they suffer more damage exceeding soak.

That's my current house rule, and I also apply Disoriented. It doesn't happen a lot in my games (so far) so I'm not sure how I would escalate it. A crit each hit quickly gets lethal, so I'd probably do something like only apply the auto-crit each time the WT was surpassed, along with additional conditions (extra setback, take away maneuvers, etc).

What I would have preferred is something like WEG (or Savage Worlds) where a Wound is a serious thing. But the main reason that doesn't work is that WEG made it hard to actually get a wound...most shots miss (aka Stormtroopers can't hit anything). In this game, getting a hit is relatively easy, even an unskilled average person can get a hit at medium range ~30% of the time.

This wound/incapacitation thing is, admittedly, one of the reasons I try to keep combat encounters to 3 rounds or less, or at least inject mobility/chase/breathing space between mini-combat encounters. It allows the use of stimpacks and a quiet space for medical attention. But I actually hate the need for stimpacks in the game...there's not a single stimpack in the movies, and in TCW there are only a few "injectables" on display, mostly for stabilization. The stimpack mechanic puts everything into video-game mode, which is poor design. I'd much rather remove stimpacks and forego the incapacitation rules.

33 minutes ago, awayputurwpn said:

It does seem weird, upon reflection (and after playing this game for years) that there are two thresholds that, when reached, can incapacitate you. What about keeping the WT, but justing removing the incapacitation effect from it? Then instead, give them an automatic critical injury when the WT is surpassed, and then another automatic critical injury any time they suffer more damage exceeding soak.

Yeah that is weird for me too, and that's the whole thing behind this post.
However i fear removing the incapacitation after WT is way too unbalancing (for NPC mostly) and letting fight going too long, so i thought about some idea to put penalities to just keep the PC "less useful, but not useless" after WT is surpassed...

1 hour ago, kelpie said:

Yeah that is weird for me too, and that's the whole thing behind this post.
However i fear removing the incapacitation after WT is way too unbalancing (for NPC mostly) and letting fight going too long, so i thought about some idea to put penalities to just keep the PC "less useful, but not useless" after WT is surpassed...

The penalties suggested in your OP seem to be a little too punitive.

• Requiring a Discipline/Resilience roll, but making it an incidental, could sway things hugely in a player's favor (or just be insurmountable if the player has low Brawn/Willpower and no skill ranks), and could easily bog the encounter down with more dice rolls and time spent adjudicating the results of the dice pool.
• Staggered & Immobilized are both effects from Critical Injuries. Just let the dice decide if they get hit with a crit.
• Disoriented times X is confusing, and also Disoriented is already an effect on the Crit list.
• An "unmodified critical hit" is, first off, highly punitive and, second, breaking with how critical injuries work. Every critical injury that you haven't had healed stacks a +10 on top of the d100 roll for the next crit roll.
• Most examples from the "Do something silly" list are examples of what you can do with a maneuver So if someone was Staggered & had the Winded injury, that is what they could do.

My point is that you're suggesting things that are mostly already part of the critical injury system, and such a character will already have at least one critical injury.

This is why I suggested just the smallest change of lifting the incapacitation effect, but in exchange every time you get hit for damage exceeding soak, you receive another automatic critical injury. That will add up fast.

And for NPCs, just treat them differently. Nemeses get the Adversary talent, after all, and it isn't available for PCs. They can also have the "At the Edge" feature, which allows them to use Light & Dark pips equally with no drawback. They also don't have an Obligation, Duty, or Morality score. They don't have Contribution Ranks and they can't earn Conflict. And the GM utterly controls the game. He can end a fight when he wants, give nemeses as high a Wound Threshold as he wants, and has a whole galaxy at his fingertips.

What's so bad about tweaking a system where PCs get treated differently than NPCs, in a way that gives them a small advantage (with a trade off, obviously)?

On 5.7.2017 at 10:27 PM, kelpie said:

Yeah that is weird for me too, and that's the whole thing behind this post.
However i fear removing the incapacitation after WT is way too unbalancing (for NPC mostly) and letting fight going too long, so i thought about some idea to put penalities to just keep the PC "less useful, but not useless" after WT is surpassed...

Regardless of NPC or PC, it worth a fear check in either case when trying to keep fighting while at the brink of death and lost limbs. Any damage will do criticals after all. So you don't need to change much for minons at all, because those will usually stay down.

So you basically just remove the "incapacitated" status when exceeding your wt and keep everything else the same. You would already get what you are looking for, especially as those automatically critical hits stack up quickly AND might ruin the characters performance for months.

Great ideas for changes here, definitely with Genesys coming I like the sounds of those.

Here's another less complex idea that helps some of the time: Make more of your NPCS focused on causing Crits rather than damage. With low damage, low Crit high Pierce weapons you can really lay on 3 or 4 nasty conditions without ever pushing a pc over the WT.

The other aspect is "when an NPC is faced with this group, who is the biggest target?" Usually the answer is the walking tank and the big gun, both of whom can probably take a decent hit without dropping. It's unlikely the NPC will shoot the little runt first round as "that guys no threat"

17 hours ago, Richardbuxton said:

The other aspect is "when an NPC is faced with this group, who is the biggest target?" Usually the answer is the walking tank and the big gun, both of whom can probably take a decent hit without dropping. It's unlikely the NPC will shoot the little runt first round as "that guys no threat"

A simple stealth check for the glass cannons can achieve the same. If they don't notice you, they will not fire at you.

Our group has 3 major damage dealers. 1 is a melee bot, and 2 have autofire weapons. There are also 2 others, who rarely draw fire. The ranged combatants usually draw fire until the melee beast charges in. He deals less damage per round, but has soak of 12, and his whole point seems to be to gather as much hostile attention as possible. Most groups I have been involved with (regardless of system) end up the combat distraction, who may or may not actually be effective as causing damage, but is very effective at drawing attention, and either soaking, dodging, or healing.

Allow especially if their opponents are Force wielders themselves opposed checks. Think about the battle between Darth Sidious and Yoda