Ebb/flow with martial artist

By TheShard, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

How well do they work together? I'm assuming piling coordination dodge on top of an ebb roll would be fun.

What are good FaD specs that synergize with martial artist. Ascetic seems a good fit. But you really seem to need 3 force dice to reliable use ebb/flow...

While Ascetic/Martial Artist with Ebb flow will work like a charm in the defensive Area (adding failures to your enemy and Using Mindbleed if you get hit to retaliate instantly) while having a pseudo FR3 ( One for acetic as first spec, one for force rating+ and one Pseudo for ascetic mind)

But you will mostlikly want to attack with an Martial artist (to use the cool thinks like Presicion Strike) So you would be better of with Enchanced than with EBB/Flow since you can realy fast add you FR to your Brawl Checks without the delay of an round with a skill lock (or lose) and even be able to push your Brawn by commiting FR later on.

But of course it is all a matter of taste.

I think Martial Artist is good to synchronize with the Protector gaining additional Wounds, Parry and alot of defensive maneuvers to increase and if you wear a shield gauntlet you are even able to reflect without the need of an LS, that way the EBB/FLOW would gain additional strength for the defensive part

as third spec the armourer to really get bulky and inprecnable or the marauder for the right damage out put.

Also a nice combo (but with flaws!) would be Makashi/ Martial Arts for a great deal of Parry and the duellist training (since there are only a few ways for a brawler to gain permament boost dice)

the weakness here is that you wouldn't be able to really use the Lightsaber options of the tree as long as you go for brawling, and the force rating would be keept low...

And of course Aggressor/ MA... full use of the disorienting options by adding aditional damage and since a brawler is a close combatant the fearsome talent will give you quite the extra options by all the fear checks your enemys will have to do ^^ (here I would preffer Enchanced over Ebb/Flow but ya know: personal taste)

4 hours ago, Nightone said:

While Ascetic/Martial Artist with Ebb flow will work like a charm in the defensive Area (adding failures to your enemy and Using Mindbleed if you get hit to retaliate instantly) while having a pseudo FR3 ( One for acetic as first spec, one for force rating+ and one Pseudo for ascetic mind)

I disagree that Ebb/Flow works as a defensive only talent. The base power is an area affect, unsoakable strain attack, that can be combined with a brawl attack (since they are skill rolls after all). It is a minion slaughter machine, and quickly wears down strain using nemeses. Just doesn't work well with allies if the user hasn't bought the exclude upgrades.

9 minutes ago, Edgookin said:

I disagree that Ebb/Flow works as a defensive only talent.

I didn't meant that it would ONLY work in the defensive area, Just that it would be working like a charm there . ^^

Of course the AOE effect can be great (if you gain the FP needed to activate the strain multiple times AND have the "spare my allys" control upgrade.

I just meant that the outcome via enchanced. FPs for sucess or advantages (as needed in that moment), is more reliable in most cases - since once you choose to spend pips on sucesses or advatages, your next action is more or less locked on using the attack (or lose the just gained advantage) of course there is also the mastery upgrade that allows you to use thoses pips immediatly but therefor you can't choose to NOT use any pips of your opposite side - so you wont be able to avoid upcomming strain and conflict due to your own checks, well and you have to commit one Force Dice beforehand and it can't be uncommited for the rest of the encounter! (so losing an action for commiting and losing that Dice for the checks and not able to cancel the effect at will) on the bright side you don't need to use any DPs for those dark pips (or white depending on your morality ^^)

What specs work better with ebb and flow? I keep getting yeah it'll work but this will work better than ebb/flow...

Soresu Defender works really well with Ebb/Flow, as it has Improved Parry/Reflect to take advantage of adding automatic threat to your opponents' attacks. Misdirect requires you to commit Force dice to get a similar effect, and it doesn't work if your opponent decides to attack your allies instead, while Ebb/Flow does. Tossing out strain is also a good way to wear down opposing Force users before you switch to offense, and you can use Defensive Circle to set up a strong followup attack with Flow without forgoing Supreme Parry.

What would you pair soresu with? You really need fr 3 to reliably trigger ebb/flow

Ascetic is a great fit, since Empty Soul is as good (maybe better) for the purposes of rolling the Force dice, and Iron Soul allows you to spring back to full after spending a bunch of strain during the encounter on Parry/Reflect. Alternately, if you want a true 2 FR spec, Hermit gives you additional enemy penalizing options via the animal bond talents. Or you could go Sage to leverage the high Intellect Soresu wants and become a little more versatile.

Warden, the upgrades for ebb/flow allow you to throw out threat on your opponents (which correspondingly allows you to trigger overbalance, works extremely well with baleful gaze for defense insteadnof coordination dodge)

On 11/8/2017 at 2:07 AM, Nightone said:

Also a nice combo (but with flaws!) would be Makashi/ Martial Arts for a great deal of Parry and the duellist training (since there are only a few ways for a brawler to gain permament boost dice)

the weakness here is that you wouldn't be able to really use the Lightsaber options of the tree as long as you go for brawling, and the force rating would be keept low...

And of course Aggressor/ MA... full use of the disorienting options by adding aditional damage and since a brawler is a close combatant the fearsome talent will give you quite the extra options by all the fear checks your enemys will have to do ^^ (here I would preffer Enchanced over Ebb/Flow but ya know: personal taste)

The shi-Cho knight has one fewer parry (4 instead of 5) but most of not all of the other talents will work with it

By the way I like the combo of Niman-disciple martial artist and ascetic (currently I have the first 2 specs which I'm going to fit out for a while before moving into ascetic). My character has a repulsor fist which makes the 2 ranks of defensive training always apply (throwing 2 black dice on incoming melee attacks is pretty awesome) right now I only have one force rating which I leave committed to the sense defense double upgrade. Melee attacks are facing 2 red and 2 black, incoming short ranged light are facing 1 red 1 purple and 1 black (from armor). I get hit a lot less than the other people in the party. 5 ranks of parry (2 from martial artist 3 from Niman disciple) and now coordination dodge (got it with with xp from last session, and I have 2 ranks of coordination) make me really hard to damage, it's great.

Well but with the repulsor fist you have a brawl weapon and lose therefore UNARMED PARRY (less strain) and SUPREME PRECICION STRIKE - Both need you to be totally UNARMED!

How practical are any of these three-spec combos, though? It'll take you a kilo of XP to get there.

Absolutely this is only viable in high xp games...

Also you can use a repulsor fist and unarmed talents if your other hand is unarmed.

However as a niman id assume a saber is in your other hand

1 hour ago, Nightone said:

Well but with the repulsor fist you have a brawl weapon and lose therefore UNARMED PARRY (less strain) and SUPREME PRECICION STRIKE - Both need you to be totally UNARMED!

Not according to Sam Stewart (lead developer for ffg star wars) when he was on the order 66 episode about no disintegrations. You only need to have one free hand.

1 hour ago, EliasWindrider said:

Not according to Sam Stewart (lead developer for ffg star wars) when he was on the order 66 episode about no disintegrations. You only need to have one free hand.

That's good, otherwise you couldn't play a drunken master who always has a bottle of booze in the off-hand. And that would be a crime.

14 hours ago, EliasWindrider said:

Not according to Sam Stewart (lead developer for ffg star wars) when he was on the order 66 episode about no disintegrations. You only need to have one free hand.

Yes for the Parry (while I don't let it exploided by LS user, that is just cheesy!)

not for the Supreme Precision strike (or at least you have to use the not armed hand for the attack and thus for the damage calculating and special effects ect.)
same goes for Iron Body's crit cost reduction, both will only work on the unarmed attack

7 hours ago, Nightone said:

Yes for the Parry (while I don't let it exploided by LS user, that is just cheesy!)

not for the Supreme Precision strike (or at least you have to use the not armed hand for the attack and thus for the damage calculating and special effects ect.)
same goes for Iron Body's crit cost reduction, both will only work on the unarmed attack

The unarmed attack talents only applying to attacks with the unarmed hand (and kicks and headbutts etc.) has been my position from the beginning. But officially you only need 1 free hand to be able to use any unarmed talent with the unarmed hand (foot, etc.). I'd *guess* we've been on the same page in terms of understanding from the beginning but have been using different language that the other has found insufficiently precise.

On 8.11.2017 at 10:07 AM, Nightone said:

But you will mostlikly want to attack with an Martial artist (to use the cool thinks like Presicion Strike) So you would be better of with Enchanced than with EBB/Flow since you can realy fast add you FR to your Brawl Checks without the delay of an round with a skill lock (or lose) and even be able to push your Brawn by commiting FR later on.

Does it really matter much how many dice I roll for my attacks? My brawl attacks nearly always crit, I can do a kick and punch at the same time and do a double crit for something like iirc 4 advantages on a hard check. That is a pretty low fruit to grab and using Ebb/Flow might be much more useful defensively, especially against all the targets which you don't hold in your martial artist stunlock. Which is especially important as a martial artist usually doesn't come with reflect talents, so damage mitigation against range attacks should be a top priority.