For those who didn't notice, over on the Genesys forum @Silverfox13 posted the handbook they used at GenCon when they ran the system. You can check that out here . Here's what it says:

Quote

...anything that grants defense (no "+" in front of the number) doesn't stack, and anything that adds to defense (a "+" in front of the number), does.

Also, defense always caps at 4. So nobody can have a defense higher than 4.

So armor and cover would grant defense, while the Defensive/Deflection qualities increase defense.

Well it would be nice if the Devs did come back in this... if this is the 'new' ruling (which makes sense) it would be nice to be told ?

This is from an official FFG product, for what it is worth.

2 minutes ago, Blackbird888 said:

This is from an official FFG product, for what it is worth.

Good enough.

So really thy just fixed sources of defense, but otherwise kept the whole system? Base difficulty is based on range bands, some talents may increase/upgrade difficulty, and then you have defense (setback) added in as well?

I mean, I guess clarity is fine, but you're still winding up with a system where eventually, everyone is gonna be hitting because it just isn't that hard to miss.

Would be nice if it weren't for another system (eventhoug there seem to be quite the similatrities)

Would really like to see something like that in the official FAQ (which is still the three years old outdated version)

10 minutes ago, Nightone said:

Would be nice if it weren't for another system (eventhoug there seem to be quite the similatrities)

Genesys is the Star Wars system, adjusted for generic use. So far, nothing shown won't work.

The most important first: Thank you for sharing with us!

"Also defense always caps at 4. So nobody can have more than 4 defense."

That's how we play it anyway already. ;-)

This is almost word for word how I've been house ruling Defense.

I wonder if we'll be seeing the mythical updated Star Wars FAQ now that they've rewritten and re-playtested some rules for Genesys.

How is this different from the old rule? Just the cap of 4?

I don't understand the aversion to high defense. It's already easy to hit every time you attack in this system. A single miss is a huge disappointment.

17 minutes ago, DaverWattra said:

How is this different from the old rule? Just the cap of 4?

I don't understand the aversion to high defense. It's already easy to hit every time you attack in this system. A single miss is a huge disappointment.

The problem came from conflicting information on how sources of defense interacted with each other. There was stacking, there was no stacking, there was only one source of defense... there was conflicting answers from developers. Then they got to the point that defense was being revised. Primarily their 'fix' is to clarify what goes with what.

2 hours ago, DaverWattra said:

How is this different from the old rule? Just the cap of 4?

Seems like the cap of 4 is the only change, as everything else is pretty much how the rules in the SW corebooks reads.

As for their aversion to high defense scores, I think it's more that rolling excessive amounts of setback dice can slow combat down and reduce the general level of danger that combat is meant to carry in this system. From the very beginning, combat in this system has been meant to reflect the idea that getting out of a fight without at least a few cuts/bruises/scrapes (i.e. taking wound damage) is a rare occurrence, and that the PC should never feel as though they're totally safe from an enemy's attack, much as there's no 100% surefire way to ensure that a PC can never fail a skill check. Yes, a PC can stack the deck in their favor quite a bit when it comes to avoiding being shot at, but they should never feel totally safe unless they are completely out of the enemy's line of sight either.

When EotE first came out, things weren't so bad, but as more sourcebooks got published and more weapons were printed that offered multiple ranks of Defensive and/or Deflection, things started to get out of hand, such as a PC using a fully modded Lorrdian Gemstone (Defensive 2, Deflection 2) in one hand with a riot shield (Defensive 2, Deflection 2) in the other while wearing armored clothing (defense 1); per the RAW in the books you'd add all that up and you've got 5s in both melee defense and ranged defense, to say nothing of any situational setback dice such as concealment or the attacker being disoriented. A generally adopted house rule has been to say that Defensive and Deflection from multiple sources wouldn't stack (you only take the best one), thus changing the example I listed to having 3s in melee and ranged defense respectively.

I'm hoping that when Genesys does come out, that it also adds a line about how Defensive/Deflection from weapons don't stack, since that's the core source of the issue with Defense. But if not, at least having a cap of 4 helps reduce the silliness to an extent.

32 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Seems like the cap of 4 is the only change, as everything else is pretty much how the rules in the SW corebooks reads.

As for their aversion to high defense scores, I think it's more that rolling excessive amounts of setback dice can slow combat down and reduce the general level of danger that combat is meant to carry in this system. From the very beginning, combat in this system has been meant to reflect the idea that getting out of a fight without at least a few cuts/bruises/scrapes (i.e. taking wound damage) is a rare occurrence, and that the PC should never feel as though they're totally safe from an enemy's attack, much as there's no 100% surefire way to ensure that a PC can never fail a skill check. Yes, a PC can stack the deck in their favor quite a bit when it comes to avoiding being shot at, but they should never feel totally safe unless they are completely out of the enemy's line of sight either.

When EotE first came out, things weren't so bad, but as more sourcebooks got published and more weapons were printed that offered multiple ranks of Defensive and/or Deflection, things started to get out of hand, such as a PC using a fully modded Lorrdian Gemstone (Defensive 2, Deflection 2) in one hand with a riot shield (Defensive 2, Deflection 2) in the other while wearing armored clothing (defense 1); per the RAW in the books you'd add all that up and you've got 5s in both melee defense and ranged defense, to say nothing of any situational setback dice such as concealment or the attacker being disoriented. A generally adopted house rule has been to say that Defensive and Deflection from multiple sources wouldn't stack (you only take the best one), thus changing the example I listed to having 3s in melee and ranged defense respectively.

I'm hoping that when Genesys does come out, that it also adds a line about how Defensive/Deflection from weapons don't stack, since that's the core source of the issue with Defense. But if not, at least having a cap of 4 helps reduce the silliness to an extent.

Thanks, good explanation.

That said, a lone stormtrooper has a 25% chance of landing a hit on a character with Defense 5 at medium range, so I'm not sure there's any risk of characters with high defense feeling 100% safe from enemy fire...

I can understand the argument that no one wants to roll that many dice. But if you're not already playing this game with a smartphone dice roller, you're crazy IMO.

I do like that combat goes quickly in this system, and high defense could easily interfere with that.

15 minutes ago, DaverWattra said:

Thanks, good explanation.

That said, a lone stormtrooper has a 25% chance of landing a hit on a character with Defense 5 at medium range, so I'm not sure there's any risk of characters with high defense feeling 100% safe from enemy fire...

I can understand the argument that no one wants to roll that many dice. But if you're not already playing this game with a smartphone dice roller, you're crazy IMO.

If Defense were the only source of Setbacks in combat. The devs have structured the game around the concept that Setbacks during any kind of stressful incident should be added liberally. Whether the battlefield or a cantina there should be Setbacks added for the confusion of a crowd, smoke, debris from blasts, lighting (too little or much), shaking uneven ground/deck, the deafening cacophony of battle punctuated by explosions and screams of pain, etc, you get the idea. That added with absurdly high Defense scores becomes problematic with absurd numbers of dice.

20 minutes ago, DaverWattra said:

Thanks, good explanation.

That said, a lone stormtrooper has a 25% chance of landing a hit on a character with Defense 5 at medium range, so I'm not sure there's any risk of characters with high defense feeling 100% safe from enemy fire...

I can understand the argument that no one wants to roll that many dice. But if you're not already playing this game with a smartphone dice roller, you're crazy IMO.

You say "crazy" like it's a bad thing.

This is how we've been running our games anyways. ...except we treat cover not as defense, but obstruction of line of sight to the target. Much like smoke or darkness would add setbacks. Even so, it hasn't gotten out of hand, yet. ...

2 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

When EotE first came out, things weren't so bad, but as more sourcebooks got published and more weapons were printed that offered multiple ranks of Defensive and/or Deflection, things started to get out of hand, such as a PC using a fully modded Lorrdian Gemstone (Defensive 2, Deflection 2) in one hand with a riot shield (Defensive 2, Deflection 2) in the other while wearing armored clothing (defense 1); per the RAW in the books you'd add all that up and you've got 5s in both melee defense and ranged defense, to say nothing of any situational setback dice such as concealment or the attacker being disoriented. A generally adopted house rule has been to say that Defensive and Deflection from multiple sources wouldn't stack (you only take the best one), thus changing the example I listed to having 3s in melee and ranged defense respectively.

I'm hoping that when Genesys does come out, that it also adds a line about how Defensive/Deflection from weapons don't stack, since that's the core source of the issue with Defense. But if not, at least having a cap of 4 helps reduce the silliness to an extent.

I always looked at that as not stacking in the first place. You have one item giving defensive 2 and another item giving defensive 2, this doesn't give you defensive 4 as items don't add their benefits together, so in effect you'd have defensive 2 twice and this was the source of not being able to stack this. This only gets worse when you start adding in talents like defensive training, which override your weapons defensive rating combletely even if its worse than the weapons.

I think that the weapon quality defensive is the worst offender. Example , if you have defensive training, this means that while using brawl , melee or lightsaber the defensive quality of your weapon is irrelevant as it gets replaced by the defensive provided by your talent (before anyone queries this, I did check this with the devs previously). So prior to some of the clarifications, if you had a shield with defensive 2, a vibrosword with defense and 3 ranks of defensive training some people thought they had the equivalent of defensive 6 , which then added to their defense , which could have been 2 for example for a total of 8 dice on the check. Now the clarification on defensive training (which as I said is worded that it replaces) would mean that you would have Defensive 3, and with this new ruling your defense would be maxed.

I like this new ruling because it makes using things like sense advantage, 'disorient, Fearsome etc or just plain old using advantage / threat to apply setback more relevant. As it was if you already had 8 or 9 setback on the roll , one more didn't make much difference in my opnion.

I think noone has concern about defense not stacking except from cover, wich it is easy to understand that even motionless armor and cover make you more hard to be hit. Even uncouncious if you are behind a cover it is harder to hit you, and even uncouncious your armor can deviate a laser shot.

But good news, I am eager to know the other changes they will make to the system.

5 hours ago, syrath said:

I always looked at that as not stacking in the first place. You have one item giving defensive 2 and another item giving defensive 2, this doesn't give you defensive 4 as items don't add their benefits together, so in effect you'd have defensive 2 twice and this was the source of not being able to stack this.

That is like saying that a rotella in your left hand and a knife is as defensive as a rotella and a sword. Which clearly is not the case. Those defensive boni cleary stack in reality, so you need a reason to not allow them to stack in your game. Balance is a good reason for that.

45 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

That is like saying that a rotella in your left hand and a knife is as defensive as a rotella and a sword. Which clearly is not the case. Those defensive boni cleary stack in reality, so you need a reason to not allow them to stack in your game. Balance is a good reason for that.

I wasnt talking about the reality of it but the mechanics. Once you have defensive 2 , gaining it again gets you nothing. It would be like having 2 Warleaders in your group both with 2 ranks of suppressing fire 2, Doesnt mean you can cause 4 strain by missing your shot.

ie no where does it say weapon qualities work like ranked talents, where gaining 2 more adds, each weapon has that quality and you choose the best, unless you have defensive training, then you use that, I totally agree with Donavan in that this could be spelled out better

Got it.
I agree as well that it could be spelled better out.

Especially as I agree that you do not gain defensive 4, but the defensive quality ADDs to your melee defense rating. So multiple times adding would still be imho the natural assumption. If you use two different weapons, you would not assume either that superior on the second weapon does not add one extra damage, because you already added one damage from the superior quality of the mainhand weapon.

Defensive and deflective do not grant you a defense rating, those qualities ADD to rating and thus it would not be required for them to stack on each other like ranked talents, each quality would just do what it does. Add something to the rating.

And it really, really should have been spelled better out, because it had confused even the developers.

I am not sure if they clarified the rules but I will quote a message from DarthGM from the GeneSys forum

" It's the same as Star Wars, except simplified. Simply put, Defense is either granted or added. If something says "Gain Defense 2", it doesn't stack. Your base Defense is now 2, even if you already had Defense 1. If something says "adds Defense", it increases the base defense. So Syndrael the Elf Warrior had a shield with Defensive 2 and a sword with Defensive 1. In Star Wars (currently), she would have melee defense 2 (because you take the better Defensive rating from the source "wielded weapons"). In Genesys, her melee Defense was 3."

2 hours ago, Rosco74 said:

I am not sure if they clarified the rules but I will quote a message from DarthGM from the GeneSys forum

" It's the same as Star Wars, except simplified. Simply put, Defense is either granted or added. If something says "Gain Defense 2", it doesn't stack. Your base Defense is now 2, even if you already had Defense 1. If something says "adds Defense", it increases the base defense. So Syndrael the Elf Warrior had a shield with Defensive 2 and a sword with Defensive 1. In Star Wars (currently), she would have melee defense 2 (because you take the better Defensive rating from the source "wielded weapons"). In Genesys, her melee Defense was 3."

This is interesting, as it is counter to how it's been described, having armo with 1 defense would grant Melee defense 1, but dual wielding vibroswords would only add 1 more for 2 , based on this you would be melee defense 3 1 base with two plus 1s

2 hours ago, syrath said:

This is interesting, as it is counter to how it's been described, having armo with 1 defense would grant Melee defense 1, but dual wielding vibroswords would only add 1 more for 2 , based on this you would be melee defense 3 1 base with two plus 1s

Except that boni from same source don't stack. You'd get the def bonus from one sword, like a wookiee wielding two rykk blades, because their the same source. I could see it stack if you had a sword and a shield, but that's two distinct sources.