Hello,

me and my group are considering starting a new game using the EotE/AoR/FaD trio. We're somewhat familiar with the rule system as we're veteran players of FFG's Warhammer RPG.

There's something that worries me, however. Having read the EotE rulebook and basing myself on our experiences with WH, I can absolutely see FFG's system being a good fit for recreating the fast paced, dense and exciting firefights of the Star Wars movie.
But how does the system hold up when it comes to duels between force users, and fights between force users and "ordinary" people?

The pacing there is completely different, at least in the fiction - simply put, fights hardly resolve in a few exchanged blows, and the duels themselves need some breath to actually develop the interesting part (the drama).
How does it work in actual play? Are the sword fights as fast paced as the firefights? Does mixing force users and non force users work well?

Thanks in advance for the feedback.

Well, I'll kick off, but you'll find a lot (if not most) disagree with me. That's fine, though - this is just what we've found with our particular group.

We use the RAW for "normal" fights, which you generally want to resolve quickly. When we're having epic lightsabre duels, however, we make attacks rolls opposed by the enemy's lightsabre skill, rather than purple dice and adversary upgrades. Obviously doesn't work for everyone - hence the disagreements - but for our group, we've found it gives cinematic, epic duels that move back and forth, with multiple generated threats and triumphs and despairs that give us a great movie-like feel. And the duels take quite a while to resolve - which is exactly what we wanted for the "big boss" fights.

Thanks! I think I'll need to figure the ins and outs of the system a bit more to be comfortable with house ruling.

My concern is mostly that, say, if you have one force sensitive character and 3 Han Solo types, if you get the big Sith dude in you'll get everyone trying to fight him. And if people act under different rules, it may feel chaotic or disjoined.

In a way, it would be the best idea to replicate the fiction - if you're not wielding a lightsaber, you don't mess with the guy who does. But will that sit well with the rest of the group?

22 minutes ago, Visanideth said:

Thanks! I think I'll need to figure the ins and outs of the system a bit more to be comfortable with house ruling.

My concern is mostly that, say, if you have one force sensitive character and 3 Han Solo types, if you get the big Sith dude in you'll get everyone trying to fight him. And if people act under different rules, it may feel chaotic or disjoined.

In a way, it would be the best idea to replicate the fiction - if you're not wielding a lightsaber, you don't mess with the guy who does. But will that sit well with the rest of the group?

Actually, we haven't found that. I have 3 PCs, and in the last lightsabre battle, there was only one PC so-armed, while the other two were both armed with blaster rifles. The bad guy was an Inquisitor. He used Bind to basically slam one of the characters against a wall and badly injure her while the other non-Force-user opened up on him with her blaster rifle. He ignited his sabre and started deflecting blaster bolts. For that, the PC was shooting against his Adversary-upgraded difficulty. When the Jedi-wannabe ignited his sabre and went in, the duel commenced. The injured PC was fumbling around for a stimpack while the rifle-armed one (a bounty hunter) was taking pot-shots at the Inquisitor. She was getting few successes, but quite a few advantages, which I ruled were him being distracted by having to deflect away shots during the duel, and mechanically translated as extra boost dice for the Jedi.

The duel itself was awesome...it ranged around a sizeable room, over furniture, then down a turbolift shaft and out into a hangar bay where they were each trying to force each other off the catwalks. The Inquisitor finally used a triumph to shove the Jedi off a catwalk. He fell, having the wind knocked out of him while the Inquisitor made for his TIE fighter. But the other two PCs were shooting at him, scoring a triumph each even though he avoided their direct shots. They blew the catwalk in front of him, sending him sliding down to the hangar-bay floor, where the Jedi engaged him again, eventually driving him back towards the wall. All the time, there was conversation back-and-forth, with the Inquisitor trying to tempt the Jedi, and the Jedi trying to talk the Inquisitor into surrendering and not dying.

In the end, the Jedi had no choice but to kill the Inquisitor, but the whole combat took a long time, there was plenty for everyone to do, and our whole group still talks about what a frakkin' awesome sequence it was.

Regarding lightsaber duels, I think it's very important to remember that a combat round is considered to be almost a minute long in this system - about 10 times longer than many people are used to having played other systems. While this might not help with the feeling of building suspense in the fight, a lightsaber duel going for three rounds is actually almost 3 minutes of action. Quite a bit of time.

4 hours ago, Visanideth said:

My concern is mostly that, say, if you have one force sensitive character and 3 Han Solo types, if you get the big Sith dude in you'll get everyone trying to fight him. And if people act under different rules, it may feel chaotic or disjoined.

This system is not well suited for Many-on-One solo boss encounters, and nor should it be. There aren't many scenes in the movies where all the protagonists gang up against a single adversary for an extended battle (Poor Kit Fisto)*. I like to mimic the movies and split the party up in multiple fights - either in a single encounter or for finales, in 3 simultaneous encounters (duels/space battles/other).

*but two-on-one LS duels are common enough

8 hours ago, Sharatec said:

Regarding lightsaber duels, I think it's very important to remember that a combat round is considered to be almost a minute long in this system - about 10 times longer than many people are used to having played other systems. While this might not help with the feeling of building suspense in the fight, a lightsaber duel going for three rounds is actually almost 3 minutes of action. Quite a bit of time.

Well, that's not strictly true. A combat round is basically any length of time you want it to be; anything that fits the narrative. It can be a minute in length, but it could just be a few seconds, as well. It's essentially the time it takes for you to "do something".

"Rounds can last for roughly a minute or so in time, although the elapsed time is deliberately not specified. Players should keep in mind that a round lasts long enough for their character to move to a new location and perform an important action." (AoR, p 210)

Narratively, when our group starts a duel, we all happily accept the conceit that we're now in much shorter rounds. It gives us long lightsabre duels that involve a great deal of cinematic action, and plenty of time for other, non-sabre-wielding-characters to act.

13 hours ago, Visanideth said:

How does it work in actual play? Are the sword fights as fast paced as the firefights? Does mixing force users and non force users work well?

All depends on the capabilities of your PCs compared to the NPC.

From a mechanical perspective, the system "holds up" just fine when it's FU v. Non-FU. It plays just like a "gun fight". It's all balanced the same way. Which means a "sword fight" is gonna flow exactly the same as "normal" combat.

One successful attack action (which, note, is not just one strike/hit in-game) deals a lot of damage.

If you want your big-bad to last a long time, you have to "build" them that way (stat them more fully than a "normal" Nemesis is statted out in the book).

As to houserules, there's nothing that making Lightsaber attacks opposed checks accomplishes that the base mechanic can't/doesn't accomplish. Like I said, you just have to build out the NPC more fully.

You have to be **** good at Reflect to not take at least a small amount of damage still, every time you get shot, so if you're envisioning your NPCs not being able to be touched by blaster fire, be prepared to give them like 10 Ranks (depending on how much xp your PCs have) in Reflect Talent (not to mentioned Improved and Supreme).

10 hours ago, emsquared said:

All depends on the capabilities of your PCs compared to the NPC.

From a mechanical perspective, the system "holds up" just fine when it's FU v. Non-FU. It plays just like a "gun fight". It's all balanced the same way. Which means a "sword fight" is gonna flow exactly the same as "normal" combat.

One successful attack action (which, note, is not just one strike/hit in-game) deals a lot of damage.

If you want your big-bad to last a long time, you have to "build" them that way (stat them more fully than a "normal" Nemesis is statted out in the book).

As to houserules, there's nothing that making Lightsaber attacks opposed checks accomplishes that the base mechanic can't/doesn't accomplish. Like I said, you just have to build out the NPC more fully.

You have to be **** good at Reflect to not take at least a small amount of damage still, every time you get shot, so if you're envisioning your NPCs not being able to be touched by blaster fire, be prepared to give them like 10 Ranks (depending on how much xp your PCs have) in Reflect Talent (not to mentioned Improved and Supreme).

Thanks a lot.

So it is possible to build force users in a way that reflects the fiction (basically invulnerable to blaster weapons)?
Or the game makes sure it's "fair" and Han can kill Vader?

1 hour ago, Visanideth said:

So it is possible to build force users in a way that reflects the fiction (basically invulnerable to blaster weapons)?
Or the game makes sure it's "fair" and Han can kill Vader?

Both, really. At the same xp/credits level a lightsaber master and a gun bunny will have a good chance against each other. However, Han and Vader were not at same level of xp or credits, and Han hadn't invested as highly in combat skills as Vader.

Consider the powerful Jedi from the fiction who are basically invulnerable to blaster weapons as very high xp characters (but also remember how well the likes of Cad Bane - high xp gunslinger - does against them in the fiction).

5 hours ago, Visanideth said:

So it is possible to build force users in a way that reflects the fiction (basically invulnerable to blaster weapons)?
Or the game makes sure it's "fair" and Han can kill Vader?

For a little while, yes, you can manage "immunity". But the measures (Talents) you have to use cost Strain, round after round. And Strain is generally much harder to regain than it is to spend. I guess that would be what an opposed check houserule would achieve that would be hard (with good reason) through the vanilla mechanics - bypassing the Strain economy.

I mean, at ~300 xp I've seen PCs that regularly do like 20 pts of damage with a blaster. You can give them Ranks and Ranks in Reflect and Improved Reflect, and Adversary 3 and Force Sense with the Difficulty Upgrades, and Defense Die, Side Step 3, but eventually something gets through cuz there's still triumphs, you run out of Strain, you get unlucky.

The problem here is your misunderstanding of what you're seeing in the fiction and how that translates to this game's mechanics. Rounds are not just a few scant seconds, one roll is not one shot/swing, taking Wounds is not getting a blaster hole shot in you.

11 hours ago, Visanideth said:

Thanks a lot.

So it is possible to build force users in a way that reflects the fiction (basically invulnerable to blaster weapons)?
Or the game makes sure it's "fair" and Han can kill Vader?

1. Yes, though even in the fiction, they would eventually succumb to blaster shots. Just look at the Order 66 scene in Revenge, and you can see that even the most skilled Master Jedi, eventually fell to overwhelming blaster fire. So there is an upper limit to that "invulnerability". Which in game terms, translates to how long it takes the PC to run out of strain.

2. Well, considering that Obi-Wan killed Grievous with a blaster, and he was pretty much a Sith, at least in level of lethality and presence, then sure, Han shooting Vader is totally doable.

That's more or less what I was expecting and also what I think makes the most sense from a game design perspective.

I also would wager that, given the abstract length of the combat turn, a large part of the menace of a force using enemy is going to manifest through aggression. In the movies you see the Sith reflecting an endless barrage of blasts, but in the game that's gonna play out with a couple rounds of deflecting and defending but then he's in your face, ending the fight one way or the other.