On 11/19/2017 at 7:26 AM, Mark Caliber said:

Somebody asked about other things that I'm modifying and I've wondered if I should include it for the discussion, so trying to address the various inquiries. (Sorry if I miss your request).

The Characters are going to be 500+ points at the start of the campaign.

We are only going to use the core rules equipment and I MIGHT include select items from the addendum books but only if they aren't significantly superior to the Core equipment or break the core equipment. (Sorry, no custom grips).

The next thing that I'm doing is I'm going to reduce the total talent & trait soak by half (round down) and then add armors' soak normally.

The bad guys are ALSO going to have very low soak values. Most of the minions should serve as little more than pop up targets in most encounters. If you're familiar with the concept of the "Sledgehammer wielding eggshell" that's kinda what I'm planning for most minions. The Storm Troopers will have a bit of armor & mostly carry and use Blaster Carbines provided by the lowest bidder.

The other factor that I'm counting on is that the group IS going to be comprised of Force sensitives with talents in Dodge, Side-step, & Parry.

So those are all of the alterations (not including the stimpaks) that I am planning to implement.

If you dont like the stimpacks, you could remove the rule that exceeding WT incapacitates, and give it a refresh at the end of combat like strain damage has. Maybe use resilience instead of cool for that roll. That way you wont have people incapacitated and out of the fight due to WT damage, but because they get critted or run out of strain. You wont need stimpacks to keep people in the fight then, and it may make first aid at the end of an encounter more valuable.

The idea is to make crits the real damage, to get players to be thinking 'do I want to continue this fight now that I will be taking real damage?' I think it would fit in with your campaign since it seems likely that you should have parry and deflect to reduce damage.

You could then change the stimpacks over to being stims, and have them heal strain instead of wounds, if that isnt a change too far

Healing Strain with stimpacks is a bad idea. You're throwing balance out the window with all the Talents based on Strain usage.

One idea I had was for them to take a toll at the end of a combat encounter and the number of Wounds healed inflicts that much Strain at the end to kind of simulate 'coming down' from them once the shooting stops.

Another idea didn't bill Strain but it did make them temp Wounds that begin to vanish pretty much at encounter's end as well, suffer a Wound for every one healed using them every few minutes or something.

All to elevate the need for a proper Medic and their Skills/Talents, the value of Bacta Tanks, and to provide an avenue to introduce additional medkit items that assist in permanently healing Wounds.

Korjik & 2P51,

Both are presenting me with interesting ideas to consider.

I DO agree that having stimpak's recover strain would break the rules badly, so that's not something I'd consider.

I like the idea that your character doesn't automatically go down and out when exceeding the Wound Threashold, I like the idea of having the characters rolling a resilience check at the beginning of their turn (When wounds exceed WT) to see if they stay active or succumb to unconsciousness. And the narrative dice could translate to adding black and blue dice based on how many wounds exceed the threshold and based on the resilience check itself. And part of my preference is based on the fact that GURPS does something VERY similar in their system. Hmmmmm.

GURPS also has a recover shock damage immediately post combat too . . . In the Star Wars RPG, I'm thinking that a character would recover wounds (one time after a combat) with a simple medicine check (no purple) and would recover wounds = to successes + the patient's brawn score. And add blue dice if medkits are handy.

The other thought that I've been considering; should I improve the initial number of wounds recovered for that initial dosage? I've been thinking 8 wounds recovered for the initial dose may be appropriate with the other modifications that I'm considering.

45 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

Healing Strain with stimpacks is a bad idea. You're throwing balance out the window with all the Talents based on Strain usage.

I haven't had that much problem with having stimpacks heal strain. I allow them to be used for wounds, strain or a combination of both, but in the same amount. So if your 1st stim of the day is 5 strain, your second can be 4 wounds or 4 strain, your choice. My PCs don't use it that often, except when someone is hit by a stun blast.

2 hours ago, 2P51 said:

Healing Strain with stimpacks is a bad idea. You're throwing balance out the window with all the Talents based on Strain usage.

One idea I had was for them to take a toll at the end of a combat encounter and the number of Wounds healed inflicts that much Strain at the end to kind of simulate 'coming down' from them once the shooting stops.

Another idea didn't bill Strain but it did make them temp Wounds that begin to vanish pretty much at encounter's end as well, suffer a Wound for every one healed using them every few minutes or something.

All to elevate the need for a proper Medic and their Skills/Talents, the value of Bacta Tanks, and to provide an avenue to introduce additional medkit items that assist in permanently healing Wounds.

The thought is that with no healing of WT with stimpacks, there will be more reliance on defensive talents that use strain. If the strain gets burned too quick you could run out mid-combat and you wouldnt have stimpacks to heal the resulting damage.

To be honest, I havent been on the player side of the table to know how much of a problem that is tho

Too many Talents based around Strain, using it, which with this change are less worrisome in Strain management. Then there's the ones for recovering and protecting it. This change essentially guts Second Wind, Resolve, Hard Headed/Improved, Intense Presence and makes Grit even less attractive. Combined with still being able to use Advantages to recover Strain, bad idea imo.

On 11/19/2017 at 6:06 PM, Genuine said:

Not even those. 'Minor nick' is literally a critical hit. As are things like getting knocked off balance or getting knocked hard enough to drop what you're holding. When a football player gets tackled and fumbles the ball - that's a crit. That's all. Basically, anything that might in real life cause a doctor to take a look at you is a critical hit, even if its something you can walk off. (Remember, a lot of crits don't have an effect after the encounter)(Also remember that the NFL likes to ignore a lot of things that ordinary people would go to the doctor for). We see a lot of crits in the original trilogy, really. Luke getting KOed by the sand people, Luke getting clawed by the Wampa, Luke getting his hand cut off, Luke getting his cyborg hand shot by one of Jabba's thugs, Luke getting lightning bolted... and so on.

The key here, imho, is that getting 'hit' doesn't mean getting injured. Just because a blaster bolt doesn't connect with your flesh doesn't mean you didn't get hit. Narratively speaking there are lots of non-injury ways you can take wounds. Have you ever hit a ball with a bat or racket and had that weird vibration/shock effect hurt your hands a bit? Wounds, and I wouldn't be surprised if a lightsaber could do the same thing when reflecting blaster bolts. Maybe someone dove for cover a bit too enthusiastically while jumping out of the way of incoming fire. Another way to think of it is that wounds = pain. Pain is pain, and too much pain will mess you up, even without taking any real injuries. A hit is just an attack that causes pain, even if it doesn't necessarily injure the target.

Look at just the Sarlac pit battle - that rail-mounted blaster shot knocked Lando and a thug off a skiff, without actually hitting anyone. I'll bet Lando took wounds from that, and the GM probably activated Knockback or maybe used a triumph to knock him off the skiff. No injury, not even literally hit from the bolt, but he took damage from it. A second shot from the bolt knocked down Boba, despite missing (again). I'm guessing the GM rolled a despair against Luke's dodge/reflect/etc. Han with the staff doesn't directly manage to damage Boba, but he clearly rolled a triumph (to damage the jetpack), and the GM narrated the wounds as occurring when Boba slammed into the side of the sail barge. And so on.

Stimpacks don't heal, they remove pain. They don't knit bones together, or cause wounds to heal, or stop bleeding. They're just a bandaid and Tylenol in a quick-administer form.

Aaaannnyyywwwwaaaayyy.... on the point. GM is gonna nerf stimpacks, he'll nerf stimpacks. Ordinarily I maintain that you should be extremely careful with houserules, as there are always unintended consequences. You want combat to be more risky and fast, fine, but be careful you aren't invalidating entire character concepts. I'm reading your changes, and I feel like one of the things you're doing is making melee combat even worse in comparison to ranged, in addition to encouraging rocket tag. Seriously, without the increased soak from brawn, and without the soak and toughness related talents in the melee trees, then there is far, far less reason to ever take those. Even lightsabers are getting nerfed in a sideways manner - breach is far less useful when everyone has less soak to weaken that auto-blaster. Even some races get a sideways nerf - anything that starts with a bonus to brawn is less useful, and Droids get even harder to make work, because their free endurance is less useful out the gate.

Frankly, with the changes you've described I'm not sure if I'd ever play anything other than an auto-blasting ranged guy. Everyone is too squishy to trust building someone without a strong offense, and the other offense types just don't measure up at all anymore.

How about this for a nerf technique that doesn't alter the rules and is in keeping with the spirit and word of the rules? Just keep your players so poor that spending 25 credits for a stimpack is something to think long and hard over.

On 11/19/2017 at 8:16 PM, penpenpen said:

Consulting the good book yields the following:

And:

So, can we agree on that, according to the official wording, wounds are actual physical damage, such as that caused by a blaster, shrapnel or wampa claws?

And stimpacks make this damage go away, at least for practical purposes, pretty much instantly.

Everyone is of course free to interpret wounds as near misses that deplete character shields if it fits their narrative better, but that would be their own (re)interpretation of the rules.

@penpenpen, nailed it. Wound damage is actual physical damage, albeit minor. This includes nicks, minor cuts, scrapes and bruises.

On 11/20/2017 at 11:57 AM, Edgookin said:

I haven't had that much problem with having stimpacks heal strain. I allow them to be used for wounds, strain or a combination of both, but in the same amount. So if your 1st stim of the day is 5 strain, your second can be 4 wounds or 4 strain, your choice. My PCs don't use it that often, except when someone is hit by a stun blast.

There are talents that do exactly this. Allowing you to heal strain with a stim application. You are aware that this completely negates those talents entirely right? I mean, if nobody at your table is playing a medical related spec, it doesn't really matter, but I would like to just point out that the devs thought about this, and made it part of what makes a medical focused character more effective than your average person trying to play Dr. House.

9 hours ago, KungFuFerret said:

There are talents that do exactly this. Allowing you to heal strain with a stim application. You are aware that this completely negates those talents entirely right? I mean, if nobody at your table is playing a medical related spec, it doesn't really matter, but I would like to just point out that the devs thought about this, and made it part of what makes a medical focused character more effective than your average person trying to play Dr. House.

Where are those talents? I didn't see them in the Colonist:Doctor or Soldier:Medic trees. I would definitely change my story if it completely duplicates a talent.

Second Wind and and Intense Presence heal Strain.

Hard Headed/Improved becomes way less attractive if stims heal Strain.

Physician removes strain per rank when making medicine checks.
Heal falls into the stimpack limitations and can heal wounds+strain if no darkside is used.

Outside of that I am not aware of any talents even remotely related to medicine/stimpacks that decrease strain.

But there are naturally tons of talents to regen strain, like Makashi Flourish.
My hotshot burns up to something like 6-8 strain per turn, so give me those drugs doctor, I can take it, I can take it! ;-)

5 hours ago, Edgookin said:

Where are those talents? I didn't see them in the Colonist:Doctor or Soldier:Medic trees. I would definitely change my story if it completely duplicates a talent.

Yep, I got those confused with Surgeon. Ignore what I said, my bad.

On ‎11‎/‎19‎/‎2017 at 1:09 AM, Darzil said:

Personally I’d start the nerf by removing the buff you gave them to halve the number of manoeuvres to use them. Costing only one manoeuvre means you can still move or aim or use many talents that you can’t when it needs both. Quick draw can allow it to still take one of course. Per the rules it is one to draw it and one to apply it.

Not sure if this was addressed in another response but I don't think you can quick draw something that isn't a weapon. The Blurb in the Box on the tree says item in the last line (after it refers to it as a weapon), but the description of the talent in the Talent section says weapon. In my opinion, if you were going to allow a StimPak to be drawn this way it would need to be in a holster on a belt, vest, or other external location, and have a large enough handle to be easily reached by feel.