3 hours ago, wanderlust2 said:

So there's a lot to respond to here, so I'll try to cover it all as best as I can.

I have 3 players in the group. 1 has 3 agility, uses a heavy blaster pistol with an +1 damage module upgrade(so 8 damage). He has NO ranks in the skill. With a single success, required to hit, he'll all but kill a single trooper. He often aims, giving him a boost die, and 2 successes is not difficult at all at medium or short range. That's a single trooper easily killed.

The combat focused player uses a vibro-ax and has a brawn of 5(he's a Trandoshan). He also has 2 ranks in Melee, so is rolling 3 green,12yellow and ignoring 2 soak. From what we've read, melee combat is always 2 purple dice, so he routinely gets 3+ success or a large number of advantages to convert to crits(or use abilities). The ax does 8 damage(with his brawn), so a single hit is doing 9 damage, ignoring 2 soak, and killing 1 trooper and wounding a second. Keep in mind he only needs 2 advantages to activate the crit(and kill a second), and when the team works together to pass him boost dice it gets insane.

The 3rd member doesn't often do much damage as he's a support character(but he can add to the pile pretty quickly). He does the slicing and such, but has an Int of 4 and doesn't struggle with too much on his side.

When these 2 go against a group of 4 troopers, they can often down 2 to 3 in a single turn. Anything with lower soak, like typical thugs or gang members(like naval troopers or such) gets slaughtered wholesale.

Maurauder Trandoshans are pretty much murder machines, it's what they're supposed to do. They don't get a ton of strain though, so hitting him in the strain is definitely going to be where it hurts. But as others said, upgrade the difficulty for the others when he's engaged. Friendly fire is always a good thing. Stuff with ensnare can also be **** to deal with if you're melee focused, being held in place and blasted is not a lot of fun. Remember to use the free movement results on threats to make sure he's got to move if he wants to get into engaged.

Another thing is to bring more and bigger minion groups. One group isn't going to cut it. Up the squad size and bring a squad per party member and they're going to struggle a lot more. Storm troopers are good at hitting and they got the weapons to make it hurt. If they have more squads facing them then you're likely to have more squads able to open up on your group. Two or three solid hits from storm trooper squads is going to hurt, even with 5 in brawn.

I'm writing all of this down. They've kicked the hornets nest of late, so all of this is fair game from the Imperial side. So far they've been dealing with small time thugs and underlings, but they're starting to garner more attention.

35 minutes ago, wanderlust2 said:

I'm writing all of this down. They've kicked the hornets nest of late, so all of this is fair game from the Imperial side. So far they've been dealing with small time thugs and underlings, but they're starting to garner more attention.

And that's exactly when the stakes should be raised! Maybe the crooks or whatever they get their illegal gear from are nervous about dealing with them. Or Imperial broadcasts go out over the HoloNet so the entire City can see a blurry hologram of their activities. Not enough to identify them, but enough to know their races and equipment. And of course the hologram starts and cuts out at JUST the right times to make them look like insane terrorists, putting all the citizens, loyal Imperials and Rebel sympathizers alike, on the lookout.

Maybe some entirely ordinary police start looking for them. Hard working dicks who are just doing their jobs and are one year away from retirement, and who are really good at detecting, and try to arrest them, and get much more information than the players can allow. What do they do? Kill the innocent police officer just doing what he thinks is best to keep his town safe?

Oh, the choices...

3 hours ago, wanderlust2 said:

One of the main issues with range and the melee character closing the distance is that our campaign is currently inside a city, with combats most often taking place inside rooms, corridors, and the occasional warehouse/hanger sized room.

This must change. First, there is a great PDF from the Order 66 podcast, you definitely want to peruse this:

http://www.d20radio.com/content/The List.pdf

In addition, make as many fights possible "running fights". There's nothing more boring than D&D-style toe-to-toe Hit-Point attrition-fests. Let the fight spill out into the streets. The PCs should have a reason to move, constantly, as should the NPCs. If the PCs are chasing the NPCs, that's a fairly easy situation to create: the NPCs have a McGuffin (loot, hostage, death star plans), and the PCs must retrieve it before the NPCs disappear inside a fortress. If the NPCs are chasing the PCs, it's a bit harder, because players are often inclined to stop moving their PCs and make a stand. One simple method to get them moving is to introduce a clock: "you stole the McGuffin, but your ride is across town and leaving in a few minutes...".

But even indoors...hotels have hallways that can be considered Long or even Extreme range. I'd give free boost dice to shooting a melee character charging up a hallway. Warehouses should be larger than life, with multiple levels. Add terrain, pipes that carry steam, exploding barrels, etc.

A couple good threads with other links:

• https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/253966-modular-encounters/
• https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/238492-encounter-design/

On a different note, it sounds like you are relying on one minion group at a time to handle the party. This can't work, because the minion group only gets one attack, and as noted, can be wiped out pretty quickly. You'll have the same problem when you throw a nemesis at the party without backup, they can go down pretty quickly and it can be quite anti-climatic. Try minion groups of different sizes, say 2 groups of 3 + a rival. If the PCs have time to concentrate on a single minion group, then they aren't under enough pressure.

Lastly, hit them in their dump stat. I'm not saying this to "punish" the PCs for making one-trick-ponies like a Brawn 5 Trandosian...ok, maybe I am, a little ...but still, it's often more cinematic if you can maneuver the scene so that it's the Slicer who has to hold off the horde while the Fighter gets the doors open, e.g.: maybe there's no power, and only Brawn can open them.

Sometimes you can set up a chase (as above) and have the PCs split up (via Threats or Despair), so they each need to make their own way to the rendezvous. Then you can tailor the running fight to showcase both the strengths and weaknesses of each PC in turn.

On 20.10.2017 at 8:21 PM, wanderlust2 said:

We've probably screwed the rules up somewhere, if I had to guess. None of the characters are overpowered, and it feels like I've barely given them any XP or duty. They all use blaster pistols and padded armor is the best anyone has. They might have 1 or 2 skills with a second rank, and most have nothing. They've received a total of maybe 30 xp spread across about 10 sessions(3 hours each)

I know we don't use the destiny points much at all. They almost never need them to succeed on even 5 difficulty dice. As a for instance, one character tried to convince some guards that he'd rushed into the base because of the riot outside. He used a destiny point to give himself 1 green and 1 yellow against the guards' 3 red. He had 2 successes, one of which was a Triumph.

It may be that they're a very well organized team, only one of which is a combat character, but the weapons just do SO much damage they can kill droves of guys in seconds.

That's why I think I've screwed up a rule somewhere. If a player shoots at a group of 4 troopers and does enough damage after soak is removed to kill 2, does he in fact kill 2, or can he only ever kill 1 person per attack?

Stormtroopers have 5 soak, and a WT of 5 iirc, so you need 11 damage after soak kill two in a group of 4 troopers. That is pretty reasonable achievable by even starting characters.

And yes, you can indeed remove several minions from the same minion group in one "hit". As the hit result represents potentially several shots, movement, action, etc. Basically every character gets his little movie scene each round to do some stuff, including walking into a minion group and taking it down with a single attack roll. Here an example of a fight which lasts two rounds and uses some clever spend advantages. Ebb & Flow is such a nasty force power ;-)

Update time!

We had another session last week, and the group found themselves split up slightly (2 and 1) and were stopped by some troopers(4) and a sergeant. Using the sergeant's ability to command the troops really changed the stakes. Despite some fast talking that split the troopers up a bit, the 2 players had their hands full while the 3rd was unable to return to help.

I think they found a new respect for the ground pounders of the Empire. I've yet to include any of the more devious tricks, but the simple addition of that 1 wound to exceed the WT did wonders for the trooper life spans.

Yay! I'm glad we could help .

It sounds like you're getting some better results already, but I would be interested in knowing more about the other side of the encounter. As has been said, a group of 4 minions vs. a group of PCs is definitely gonna get wiped out, but who cares? You're the GM, you have an infinite amount of Stormtroopers to call upon. Instead of thinking about how to keep them alive longer, I'd posit that you might want to think more about two things: 1) Context for the encounter, and 2) What happens next?

Let's take that 4 Stormtrooper group as an example.

In the fiction of Star Wars, Stormtroopers aren't people, they're lemmings. The Empire points them at a problem, and they continue to show up until that problem is dealt with violently. So why are your players encountering them as a group of only 4 with no commander? Did they do something to cleverly separate them? Then great! They should be rewarded with an easy fight. If not? Maybe this group was the first ones to arrive on a scene, and it turns out there were 2 more groups of 4 half a block away, who are certainly going to start running toward the sounds of blaster fire.

You said it's a city-based campaign. Now there are bodies to deal with, and every population center in Star Wars is filled to the brim with other people. Once the Imperial outpost in the city realizes that a squad has gone missing, they're gonna start knocking down doors, intimidating the locals, and bribing informants. Remember that roll during the combat where they got 2 Threat? Well, it turns out people saw them, and now they're all wanted men in the city. This means TONS of stormtroopers, random Bounty Hunter attacks, etc. Your PCs better learn how to lay low or sneak off-planet.

I'd go back and watch the first hour of A New Hope, and think about it like a session. It's full of this kind of thing. Troopers show up, interrogate and murder anyone who had contact with the PCs, intimidate and bribe locals for info, and then the PCs have to shoot their way out of a spaceport, marking them as wanted for the rest of the campaign. It's ruthless.

But back to that initial combat for a second. Are the troopers never doing damage? Like you said, your PCs are wearing padded armor at best, which means they have between 4-7 soak. If that minion group gets even a single net success, that's 10 dmg, for a net wound of 3-6. Not to mention, a 4 minion group of Stormtroopers attacks with 3 Yellows (until they start dying). Even if they don't go first and one or two die, there's somewhere between an 8%-25% chance that they're gonna score a critical from a triumph, along with whatever wounds they're able to inflict.

In this system, it's pretty difficult to get rid of wounds and criticals without serious medical attention or a LOT of downtime. Neither of which they should be getting, because, as stated above, they're now murderers of loyal Imperial soldiers. If they're fighting even just once or twice a day, this is really going to add up.

Stormtroopers don't win by staying alive. They win by coming, and coming, and coming, and coming....and eventually you die. Or maybe you don't? But it just means that you're definitely a known enemy of the Empire, and suddenly there's a narrative reason for the REAL big baddies to start showing up.

Are you doing anything dramatic with your group that doesn't involve combat? Tense social encounters? Hunts for forbidden knowledge?

The majority of "my PCs are too powerful" threads boil down to the GM relying too much on combat to carry the game.

My games aren't very combat focused in most cases. We quite often do entire sessions with no combat and only investigations, interrogations, and such. They're deeply entwined is a fairly complex series of events and circumstances, and are racing to unravel the truth before the culprits escape.

Is the Empire really behind the slaver ring in the Malabor system? What part, if any, do the Hands of Valeon play, and why was that name linked to a 3000 year old, now erased, data archive index entry? Who is Hineni and why is he interfering in their investigation? What are the motives behind the terrorist bombings across the system? Why does the Queen of the Peridot system seem so interested in the events unfolding in the neighboring system?

Good times.

On 12/5/2017 at 1:05 PM, wanderlust2 said:

My games aren't very combat focused in most cases. We quite often do entire sessions with no combat and only investigations, interrogations, and such. They're deeply entwined is a fairly complex series of events and circumstances, and are racing to unravel the truth before the culprits escape.

Is the Empire really behind the slaver ring in the Malabor system? What part, if any, do the Hands of Valeon play, and why was that name linked to a 3000 year old, now erased, data archive index entry? Who is Hineni and why is he interfering in their investigation? What are the motives behind the terrorist bombings across the system? Why does the Queen of the Peridot system seem so interested in the events unfolding in the neighboring system?

Good times.

Do your players roll dice during these investigations and interrogations?

Yep. They have all sorts of rolls depending on how they're searching. Slicing for information, fast talking folks, etc.

If you want to boost the strength of minion groups substantially, make soak apply to each individual minion in the group (my personal preference) so that if you're fighting a group of say 4 stormtroopers (5s/5w) and you deal 11 damage, you only kill one. The other option is to make it that while minion groups only act as a single unit, each minion has to be targeted individually, so that there is no carry over damage (so if you deal 11 damage, you do 11 damage to a single minion, not the group).

You'll notice the player groups become significantly less powerful.

4 hours ago, BipolarJuice said:

If you want to boost the strength of minion groups substantially, make soak apply to each individual minion in the group (my personal preference) so that if you're fighting a group of say 4 stormtroopers (5s/5w) and you deal 11 damage, you only kill one. The other option is to make it that while minion groups only act as a single unit, each minion has to be targeted individually, so that there is no carry over damage (so if you deal 11 damage, you do 11 damage to a single minion, not the group).

You'll notice the player groups become significantly less powerful.

11 damage will only kill and injure one stormtrooper though. On the first minion it needs to exceed their wound threshold, not just reach it. So 11 damage will be enough to get through the 5 soak and then deal 6 damage, which brings them one over the threshold. If you want to take out two in one hit you need to deal 16 damage, since the next one doesn't need to have his or her threshold exceeded.

From what I can see, using minions with tactical sense works pretty good for you. But, if they chew through that, escalate. The Empire will know something is killing troops in this area, so they call in reinforcements. Maybe they flood the area with Stormtroopers. Maybe they send in an AT-ST. Escalation is your friend. If that doesn't work, more armor. Gunships, TIE support, maybe even an AT-AT if they're strong enough. If all else fails, Orbital Bombardment.

8 hours ago, Darth Revenant said:

11 damage will only kill and injure one stormtrooper though. On the first minion it needs to exceed their wound threshold, not just reach it. So 11 damage will be enough to get through the 5 soak and then deal 6 damage, which brings them one over the threshold. If you want to take out two in one hit you need to deal 16 damage, since the next one doesn't need to have his or her threshold exceeded.

Technically the second one does need to have their threshold exceeded as well, but because all of the troopers have the same threshold, once you exceed it once, for every extra trooper's worth of wounds you inflict, you end up exceeding the threshold of the next, and so on .