My group has been working through the Long Arm of the Hutt and this Sunday, we'll be coming up on the final showdown with Teemo (I think). Based on what I've seen of my group, I suspect that they will go for the most violent option possible and try to fight the Hutt head on. According to the adventure, I'm supposed to use the Hutt Crime Lord profile for the fight, and that terrifies me. My players are all pretty new and thus don't have the skills or weapons to take on someone with 10 soak and a wound threshold of 30.

So I'm planning on trying to make things just a little bit easier so it doesn't turn into a party-wipe. Since Teemo is a younger Hutt, I'm thinking his soak would be more like 7 (to reflect that he doesn't have as much fat on him) and lowering his wound threshold to more like 20 or so. I'm also going to limit him to just using a blaster rather than allowing for melee attacks with a 6 Brawn.

But as I was thinking about it, I thought that maybe I would also make a special "Hutt Killer" weapon for my players to find in the palace. The story reason for this is that Teemo is developing the weapon to take out Jabba (thus giving my players more proof that they can offer to Jabba if they decide to go for a more peaceful resolution).

This is what I'm doing: finding the prototype Hutt Killer in the workshop will require a Hard Perception check (unless they learn of its existence from the guy who developed and built the weapon). Once they find the hidden safe its in, it will take a Hard Skulduggery check to open the safe. If they don't know what it is, they'll have to pass an Average Ranged (Heavy) check to figure out what it's good for, then pass a Hard Mechanics check to get the weapon up and running.

Here are the stats that I came up with:

Skill: Ranged (Heavy)

Damage: 7

Crit: 3

Range: Medium

Encumbrance: 1

Hard Points: 1

Special: Prepare 1, Slow-firing 2, Pierce 4, Burn 2*, Blast 3**, Limited Ammo 3, Vicious 2

The Hutt Killer fires explosive harpoons at its target, the idea being that the harpoons are designed to penetrate the Hutt's fat layers. Thus the burn would ignore Soak on a successful hit. The blast would be triggered in the next round after a hit (or miss). If the players generate two Victories, the harpoon basically pins the target to the ground or wall, immobilizing them for two rounds. But this also means that Burn and Blast would be reduced by Soak that time.

After the encounter, the Hutt Killer would permanently break.

So have I gone too far? I don't want this to be an impossible battle, but I don't want this to be an easy out either.

Personally, I'm of the mind that if the players do something stupid and start a fight outside their weight class then they deserve to get their asses handed to them. don't pull any punches up to and including a TPK ( though when things invariably went south I would give them an out should they want to take it).

It may be a harsh lesson to learn but realizing that they can't always blast their way out of a situation is a lesson worth learning.

You also have to ask yourself what the benefit of hobbling a potentially major long term adversary is. "killing" a hutt is almost like killing a cop. It isn't going to end well.

Biggest risk that you run is of having players/characters with no sense of danger or who are going to be constantly expecting an easy fight.

Obviously your mileage will vary and you know your players better than we do but my advise is. Keep it simple.

When I ran starter game the first time. The players were able to access the kitchen. Then proceeded to drug the Hutts food with a large amount of spice stored there... Made Teemo overdose without them fighting him personally, although they had to fight their way out.

You could always let the players use an indirect method.

1 hour ago, warchild1x said:

Personally, I'm of the mind that if the players do something stupid and start a fight outside their weight class then they deserve to get their asses handed to them. don't pull any punches up to and including a TPK ( though when things invariably went south I would give them an out should they want to take it).

It may be a harsh lesson to learn but realizing that they can't always blast their way out of a situation is a lesson worth learning.

You also have to ask yourself what the benefit of hobbling a potentially major long term adversary is. "killing" a hutt is almost like killing a cop. It isn't going to end well.

Biggest risk that you run is of having players/characters with no sense of danger or who are going to be constantly expecting an easy fight.

Obviously your mileage will vary and you know your players better than we do but my advise is. Keep it simple.

If anything, killing a Hutt is way worse than killing a cop. If you kill a cop, you can flee the country, and if you get caught, you're still likely to get off easy with life in prison.

A Hutt's family will pay well to find you wherever you go, and will pay almost as much to make sure your greatest regret in life was failing to end yourself before that bounty hunter caught up to you - a blaster bolt in the head would have been painless, and about a thousand years faster.

My players had knowledge of the palace since they had been around for a while. Somehow they went for another route: they hired muscle in the form of bounty hunters. A smuggler, a pilot (even is she was a low Life brawler) and a mechanic did not have much options against 10-20 gamorreans, a Hutt and a few BH. However, other BH did. And that is what they used. They gave them the Krayt Fang and a few things in the palace for having the hutt taken out. It worked.

However, they negotiated with Teemo after that (he was just subdued, not killed) and reached an agreement with him. That was an unexpected turn of events for me. It was a nice twist. It showed that sometimes violence did not necessarily the best option and enriched the hooks at my disposal so everybody was happy there.

fully agree with warchild1x.

I would never hand the PCs with a weapon that powerful and specifically build to take down a hutt. This would basically be me as GM telling them: "go for it! you can do it!". I wanted it to be their choice.

My players faced Teemo in an early game as well (we've just done Escape from Mos Shutta then this, and the characters were built based on the CRB (not the beginner game chars which are slightly more powerful).

I deliberatly did not scale down the difficulty and warned the players that if they plan something as bold as taking down a Hutt in his own palace that might easily get them killed or at least enslaved. So they came up with a smart plan to get in and get advantage using their personal strenghts (wookie impersonated a gladiator to get in fron of the Hutt with his axe, the team sealing off a number of guards first and got in positions for a surprice attack and managed to subdue a most minios quickly etc). The hutt himself was a tough one of course for an early game players, but they managed to bring the Hutt down... by dropping a large chandelier on him. The PCs came up with an idea on their own (and done a good perception check to look for something in the room to use against the hutt) and I just helped to narrate it.

I guess if they would be in the same situation now, having played for a couple of years, they would go for some more interesting solutions (e.g. get a powerful ally to protect them, reach out to other hutt clans or Teemo's superiors to make a deal etc.) as they just know they world and their options better. But I guess it was just logical to kill the bastard at that stage...

Thank you, everyone, for the feedback. I kind of suspected my help wasn’t a good idea. No Hutt Killer for my players. They’ll have to sink or swim without it.

It's an RPG..not a game where you play the Heroes of The Rebellion. ... let fate decide

20 hours ago, Degenerate Mind said:

A Hutt's family will pay well to find you wherever you go,...

Not just the family, but Huttkind in their entirety; having a Hutt killed by a "lesser being" without the direst of repercussions is setting a most undesirable precedence.

9 hours ago, ExpandingUniverse said:

It's an RPG..not a game where you play the Heroes of The Rebellion. ... let fate decide

Technically speaking, a minimum of 33% of the games played in SWRPG are at least supposed to be focused on the heroes of the Rebellion.

On 10/27/2017 at 5:00 PM, Scapino said:

This is what I'm doing: finding the prototype Hutt Killer in the workshop will require a Hard Perception check (unless they learn of its existence from the guy who developed and built the weapon). Once they find the hidden safe its in, it will take a Hard Skulduggery check to open the safe. If they don't know what it is, they'll have to pass an Average Ranged (Heavy) check to figure out what it's good for, then pass a Hard Mechanics check to get the weapon up and running.

So have I gone too far? I don't want this to be an impossible battle, but I don't want this to be an easy out either.

And if they fail ANY of those checks??? Yeah, it's a really bad idea. I've been in that spot before and tried similar things back in my earlier days of RPG. You're making up skill checks to justify what you already want to do. If they fail them, then you're just going to give it to them anyways (or else your plan fails).

When you get "stuck" like this (a nearly impossible foe), you have to adjust your plan as a GM. Teemo isn't impossible, a Heavy Blaster Rifle does 10 damage so any success will do damage to him. A regular BR starts at 9D. Teemo's Agility is "1" and has only YG for Ranged-Light. All your PC's will shoot better than that. Just have Teemo shoot it out until he gets below half HP's and then go melee. His Brawl attack is 6-green, 2 purple, and 3 setback dice, only a 72% to hit. His Melee is only slightly better and he does not start with a Melee weapon. He could hit them with furniture (improvised weapon, +2 SB dice, I think). IF you are going to change anything, simply reduce the Soak. 6 Brawn is minimum 6 Soak. Not sure where the other 4pts come from.

Soak 10? What the? They CAN'T be serious!

I can see WT 30, but the soak 10 is ridiculous.

I have two hard examples to cite too.

In ROTJ Leah strangles Jabba with nothing but her bare hands and chain (+1 dmg). So does anyone believe that a bikini clad Leah had a brawn of 10+?

In the same movie Luke lunges for and force grabs a BlasTech DL-18, which per FFG is a Blaster Pistol (Not heavy, not light, just run of the mill). The guard that Luke sticky fingers, the blaster from, prudently moves in to protect his charge and keeps Luke from firing at Jabba. Now with that played out, Per EotE, that weapon does 6 base damage. With a Soak of 10 that means that weapons will almost NEVER cause damage. Heck most of the stock heavy rifles won't put much of a hurt on an opponent with a Soak of 10!

And lastly, the adversaries in AoR were scaled back in stats, and we can surmise, that was largely due to the fact that the EotE opponents were grossly overpowered (Especially when taking the Soak scores into account).

To whit, a Soak of 10 is game breaking. So NERF that Hutt!

And to cite RotJ again, the whole point of Luke's plan was to get Jabba out of his palace, where Luke would enjoy a more "balanced" fight away from all of the Palace security.

Sy Snootles killed Ziro the Hutt via a few shots from a blaster pistol.

Easy, give the players a long chain and a bikini, I mean dancers outfit.

I echo the sentiments of the PCs being a bit silly and deserving their fate if they chose to start a fight. Are these new players to the narrative dice system? I'm getting a hint of d20itis at play.

If they want to attack, beat them unconscious and have them wake up in the prison with an opportunity to escape and 20 obligation to the Hutt for sparing their lives, IMO.

I would argue that if the goal of the game in combat is to replicate canon, then it fails miserably. It’s been said that everyone in this game is “glass cannon,” but their tanks in comparison to canon. Even blaster pistols are typically one hit kills, and that’s with armor.

EDIT: Not saying that the game is bad. There’s a reason why people need to survive being shot. But comparing EotE results to canon ones doesn’t make sense. Also, we know that Leia used the Dark Side to increase her strength when killing Jabba.

do we know that canonically?

Personally wounds don't represent direct hits, but rather physical fatigue, while critical hits reflect the damage from blows that actually do connect firmly.

I thought Hutts having a soak of 10 is crazy. Sure, battle hutts I could understand, but Jabba was far from an imposing warrior.

Personally the best way to deal with a Hutt is to find his rivals and collabourate with them; not everyone works with Hutts and there are plenty of criminal organisations that don't.

52 minutes ago, Endersai said:

do we know that canonically?

Leia using the Dark Side? Yes.

25 minutes ago, LordBritish said:

Personally wounds don't represent direct hits, but rather physical fatigue, while critical hits reflect the damage from blows that actually do connect firmly.

I thought Hutts having a soak of 10 is crazy. Sure, battle hutts I could understand, but Jabba was far from an imposing warrior.

Personally the best way to deal with a Hutt is to find his rivals and collabourate with them; not everyone works with Hutts and there are plenty of criminal organisations that don't.

Not quite. Wounds represent cuts, scratches, bruises, and the like. Strain covers fatigue.

30 minutes ago, Yaccarus said:

Leia using the Dark Side? Yes.

I was unfamiliar with this - where did it get confirmed?

30 minutes ago, Endersai said:

I was unfamiliar with this - where did it get confirmed?

I second the motion. How do I not know of this?

On 28.10.2017 at 0:00 AM, Scapino said:

My group has been working through the Long Arm of the Hutt and this Sunday, we'll be coming up on the final showdown with Teemo (I think). Based on what I've seen of my group, I suspect that they will go for the most violent option possible and try to fight the Hutt head on. According to the adventure, I'm supposed to use the Hutt Crime Lord profile for the fight, and that terrifies me. My players are all pretty new and thus don't have the skills or weapons to take on someone with 10 soak and a wound threshold of 30.

Let the PC fight the Hutt head on, if they choose so. And remember that when you beaten over you Wound Threshold, you are not dead, just incapasitated. In good case the PCs lose to the Hutt, and after getting beaten up the PCs wake up from the cell, and their next task is a prison break. On bad case the PCs kill the Hutt, and now they are in deep problems. As Degenerate Mind and other wrote, killing a Hutt is a bad idea. I would give enough obligation from that. I would actually turn that to a core idea of main campaign.

On 28.10.2017 at 0:00 AM, Scapino said:

So have I gone too far? I don't want this to be an impossible battle, but I don't want this to be an easy out either.

Listen to your players. Say yes to them. I know that in our group PCs would come up with some hair-brained idea with almost nothing to do with what they'd want to do, and they'd make that work if I'd allow that. And by allowing I mean giving realistic difficulties on multiple checks. Our players enjoy mostly the problem solving aspect of game. They really don't like the combats. Find what your players enjoy and bring more of that to game.

9 hours ago, Yaccarus said:

I would argue that if the goal of the game in combat is to replicate canon, then it fails miserably. It’s been said that everyone in this game is “glass cannon,” but their tanks in comparison to canon. Even blaster pistols are typically one hit kills, and that’s with armor.

PCs in our group easily drop a storm trooper squad of three in one attack.

9 hours ago, Yaccarus said:

EDIT: Not saying that the game is bad. There’s a reason why people need to survive being shot. But comparing EotE results to canon ones doesn’t make sense. Also, we know that Leia used the Dark Side to increase her strength when killing Jabba.

In interviews the DEVs have highlighted the GM responsibility. IMO, This game is not a D&D/PF where rules should cover every use case, but GM must make rulings on the fly. Leia kiling the Jabba was not Leia getting Jabba over its wound threshold, but more probably a narrative element of a story.

Anyway, I always find it annoying when people complain about game not replicating the exact mechanics of a movie (or movie not replicating a comic on screen to screen basis). It's like complaining my cake doesn't taste like car tire. Those are totally different things to begin with. Game is a game, and movie is a movie. Game made from movie should replicate the style and atmosphere of a movie, not actual events. Now, I'm not saying that you, Yaccarus, are complaining. You are absolutely correct that comparing EotE results to canon results doesn't make sense. Especially when those events can be made exactly the same. PC and GM just changed Leia vs Jabba combat to be resolved with a single dice roll, instead of long and arduous dice rolling marathon where there are only losers. And the PC roll very very well. It's ok to change rules like that when it enhances the game. DEVs themselves focus more on narrative than on rules when they play.

9 hours ago, Endersai said:

I was unfamiliar with this - where did it get confirmed?

8 hours ago, Vestij Jai Galaar said:

I second the motion. How do I not know of this?

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