9 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

The ability to use all 5 during one encounter makes them rather spamy. Having medicine checks cost an action, while stim pack application is a maneuver and can be done 5 times per target per encounter is imo the reason people are displeased with them. It feels gamey and rather wrong to spam them.

@Tom Cruise A skilled medic should get out of his medicine check and 2 stimpacks 20 wounds removed. And if he needs to visit again in the same encounter, the remaining 3 stims still remove another 15 wounds. As medicine checks are once per encounter, stim application checks are replacing often, so instead of healing wounds with his action the medic is boosting characteristics. Stimpack specialisation and stimpack application are really good talents.

Now if you would make stimpacks once per encounter, the medic spec would become imo rather weak, meanwhile the spam of stim packs would certainly end.
Requiring that a medicine action goes alongside of the stimpack use would stop most spam as well. Huge healing boost as well, as mentioned currently medicine is for each target a once per encounter thing.

The key balancing factor you're forgetting, though, is that you can only use 5 Stimpacks total within any 24 hour period. And, on top of that, the return you get from each use diminishes from 5, to 4, to 3, to 2, to 1. So, it's not five tomes per target per encounter. It's five times total per day with diminishing returns each use. That's a huge balancing factor

31 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

That was a critical hit.

That's exactly my point. It's pretty much the most minor hit we see in the entire film series, and they still treat it as a big deal. A PC tanking a hit from blaster pistol in the game is pretty much a routine situation. Getting critted is being unlucky. In the movies, a crit is pretty much the default result from any hit. In the game, you can pretty confidently tank 2 or 3 hits, because they will most likely be minor flesh wounds, and that just rubs me the wrong way.

3 minutes ago, penpenpen said:

That's exactly my point. It's pretty much the most minor hit we see in the entire film series, and they still treat it as a big deal. A PC tanking a hit from blaster pistol in the game is pretty much a routine situation. Getting critted is being unlucky. In the movies, a crit is pretty much the default result from any hit. In the game, you can pretty confidently tank 2 or 3 hits, because they will most likely be minor flesh wounds, and that just rubs me the wrong way.

No no no, your mistake is simple. When Han runs away from the Stormtroopers on the death star he gets "hit" a few times.
When Luke reflects all those Blaster shots in RotJ he gets hit each time.
When Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan defend against the droideka they get hit a dozen times over.

But they never get critical hit and thus they do not get injured. The system uses words like wounds or hit without actually meaning hit or wounds in essence, because everything that is not a critical hit is not an injury.

2 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

No no no, your mistake is simple. When Han runs away from the Stormtroopers on the death star he gets "hit" a few times.
When Luke reflects all those Blaster shots in RotJ he gets hit each time.
When Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan defend against the droideka they get hit a dozen times over.

But they never get critical hit and thus they do not get injured. The system uses words like wounds or hit without actually meaning hit or wounds in essence, because everything that is not a critical hit is not an injury.

I disagree with you there. A hit is still a hit in this game, but the wounds are only minor, flesh wounds, bruises, scratches, nicks, and scrapes, rather than critical wounds.

2 hours ago, themensch said:

Are your PCs running around with a backpack full of stimpacks? Managing PCs' resources is a key tool for invoking story-related stress, and it seems to me that constantly supply refreshing is counter to what you're trying to accomplish. As a GM there are lots of options for removing offending gear from the PCs.

Yes, they have run around with backpacks full of stims. Plus the party bought 3-4 of the medkits that give a free stim every day. I was encumbrance nazi on it (5 stims/encumbrance), but they found it worthwhile, and were willing to spend the credits on it.

Double post

49 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

No no no, your mistake is simple. When Han runs away from the Stormtroopers on the death star he gets "hit" a few times.
When Luke reflects all those Blaster shots in RotJ he gets hit each time.
When Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan defend against the droideka they get hit a dozen times over.

But they never get critical hit and thus they do not get injured. The system uses words like wounds or hit without actually meaning hit or wounds in essence, because everything that is not a critical hit is not an injury.

I'm not buying that. Nothing in the game suggests that hits are not in fact, hits. If you are hit, you are wounded and need medical attention or extended periods of rest to heal. Han does not have a scratch on him. He does not need medical attention. He does not need time to heal.

Fights in the game result in a lot of flesh wounds. In the movies, almost all wounds are serious, but there are fewer of them. One can prefer one over the other, but regardless, they are not the same thing. After all, the soak/wounds mechanic is something we've seen before in FFG's 40K games. They adapted it to Star Wars because they liked the mechanic, not because it fit. It's not a bad mechanic, but it's not really star wars either.

To FFGs credit however, it does work somewhat better with lightsabers, thanks to Breach and very low crit ratings.

2 hours ago, penpenpen said:

This the crux of the issue. In the movies, getting hit is dangerous. In the game, you take a stimpack and walk it off if the hit didn't bounce off your ripped pecs in the first place. And beefcakes are more resistant to blaster fire than the skinny dude covered in armor plates. In the movies, there is great drama when Leia takes a glancing hit.

Don't get me wrong, I love the system in a lot of ways, but the damage mechanics can quite brutally yank you out of the immersion at times. There's been three (?) different star wars games since, and WEG still got the damage mechanics the most right.

This is misunderstanding and bad expectations. I am pretty sure on the Deathstar they took wound damage. Just no crits.

This system works well if you underatand that wounds are very minor damage and the real damage is in the crits. Ie when Leia gets shot in Return of the Jedi that was a Crit.

22 minutes ago, Edgookin said:

Yes, they have run around with backpacks full of stims. Plus the party bought 3-4 of the medkits that give a free stim every day. I was encumbrance nazi on it (5 stims/encumbrance), but they found it worthwhile, and were willing to spend the credits on it.

Are you spacing your encounters out? It doesnt make sense to carry that many stim packs unless you are screen wiping days away and letting them get full use out of them every encounter...

43 minutes ago, Edgookin said:

Yes, they have run around with backpacks full of stims. Plus the party bought 3-4 of the medkits that give a free stim every day. I was encumbrance nazi on it (5 stims/encumbrance), but they found it worthwhile, and were willing to spend the credits on it.

Guess it's time for some stunners and disruptors!

58 minutes ago, Daeglan said:

This is misunderstanding and bad expectations. I am pretty sure on the Deathstar they took wound damage. Just no crits.

This system works well if you underatand that wounds are very minor damage and the real damage is in the crits. Ie when Leia gets shot in Return of the Jedi that was a Crit.

I shouldn't have to bend over backwards and squint really hard at the rules for them to line up with the setting they proudly proclaim on the cover.

A hit in the game is most definetly a hit, otherwise it wouldn't make sense to heal it with medicine. Han Solo was not hit on the Death Star. He was perfectly unhurt.

8 minutes ago, penpenpen said:

I shouldn't have to bend over backwards and squint really hard at the rules for them to line up with the setting they proudly proclaim on the cover.

But it fits the setting perfectly fine. Stormtroopers shoot all the time at our heroes. "No one except Stormtroopers shoot this precise", yet in all of three movies we see only critical hit. ;-)
You see as well that hits don't mean injuries when you check the parry and reflect rules. And the soak rules. And the damage of the weapons. Everything is aimed to get this star wars feeling of lots of stuff shooting while no one actually get seriously injured for the most part.
Though FFG sucks at writing rules and explaining concepts, nothing new there. And they wanted two resources for endurance, one easy to regenerate and one a little more longtime. Though for minions and rivals FFG is fine with just one resource for strain. ;-)

BTW, you might heal "wounds" with medicine, but it takes ludicrous low amounts of time to recover wounds with medicine and simple stimulants heal them as well. Meanwhile Medicine checks can only used one per week on injuries, which is more realistic amount of time for glancing blows with a blaster and stimpacks do nothing against them.

The way I see the reflects and parries in the movies as ones where they stopped all damage from getting through, thus turning what would have been a hit away.

Just now, Tramp Graphics said:

The way I see the reflects and parries in the movies as ones where they stopped all damage from getting through, thus turning what would have been a hit away.

This is d20 thinking dude.

45 minutes ago, penpenpen said:

I shouldn't have to bend over backwards and squint really hard at the rules for them to line up with the setting they proudly proclaim on the cover.

Firstly, how many PCs act like Han Solo or Luke Skywalker on the Death Star? The PCs were always running on the Death Star, not standing and fighting like I see the majority of PCs doing.

(or the characters on the Invisible Hand who surrendered to Greivous? Or the characters in Jabba's palace who let themselves be captured without a fight?)

Secondly, how many times do you have enemies intentionally missing like the stormtroopers were on the Death Star?

My point is, perhaps the fact that your game doesn't feel setting-appropriate is because of the roleplaying habits of your table, not the structure of the rules.

Just now, awayputurwpn said:

This is d20 thinking dude.

Not really, we see Ki Adi Mundi make Reflect attempts that don't completely stop the hits from getting through and eventually they completely overwhelm him and he's cut down. However, the ones where Luke deflected the speeder bike shots, or Qui Gon and Obi Wan deflected the droids' shots, those to me qualify as deflecting all of the damage resulting in total misses allowing redirects as per the Improved Reflect and Improved Parry talents.

11 minutes ago, awayputurwpn said:

This is d20 thinking dude.

"You must unlearned what you have learned..."

2 minutes ago, Tramp Graphics said:

Not really, we see Ki Adi Mundi make Reflect attempts that don't completely stop the hits from getting through and eventually they completely overwhelm him and he's cut down. However, the ones where Luke deflected the speeder bike shots, or Qui Gon and Obi Wan deflected the droids' shots, those to me qualify as deflecting all of the damage resulting in total misses allowing redirects as per the Improved Reflect and Improved Parry talents.

Yeah that's exactly how it works in Saga Edition (different talent names, but the mechanics are identical to your description).

Just now, awayputurwpn said:

Yeah that's exactly how it works in Saga Edition (different talent names, but the mechanics are identical to your description).

Which is a game I never played.

Just now, Tramp Graphics said:

Which is a game I never played.

I'm just pointing out the irony!

Just now, awayputurwpn said:

I'm just pointing out the irony!

I get that, but I'm not basing this on a D20 mentality, since I hate D20, particularly Saga. It's based purely on interpretation of the movies from the perspective of the game mechanics.

1 minute ago, Tramp Graphics said:

I get that, but I'm not basing this on a D20 mentality, since I hate D20, particularly Saga. It's based purely on interpretation of the movies from the perspective of the game mechanics.

Aw come on, how can ya hate it if you've never tried it?

Give Saga a chance! It just seems to line up with all your expectations that I've read this far, especially where this game seems to disappoint or come down at odds with how you see the movies playing out in terms of game mechanics.

8 minutes ago, awayputurwpn said:

Firstly, how many PCs act like Han Solo or Luke Skywalker on the Death Star? The PCs were always running on the Death Star, not standing and fighting like I see the majority of PCs doing.

(or the characters on the Invisible Hand who surrendered to Greivous? Or the characters in Jabba's palace who let themselves be captured without a fight?)

Secondly, how many times do you have enemies intentionally missing like the stormtroopers were on the Death Star?

My point is, perhaps the fact that your game doesn't feel setting-appropriate is because of the roleplaying habits of your table, not the structure of the rules.

Well, the thing is, theres not a terrible lot you can do regarding incoming fire. Sidestep and Dodge are nice, as are cover and the like, but most of the time, if the enemy is halfway competent, it will only mitigate a hit as these talents are fairly rare, so multiple ranks are hard to get. On the other hand, almost every tree with has a few ranks of Grit and Toughened. Clearly, design intent is that simply holding your ground and tanking the damage should be as, or more, viable than trying not get hit in the first place. And if you do concentrate on making a character that tries not to get hit, youre screwed when you run into somone with a good dice pool, while the tanking build works about the same against everything.

FFG had all the tools they needed, but for whatever reason they decided to skew the balance to favor the tanks.

An important consideration for any GM who wants to nerf stimpacks (that I pointed out before) that I wanted to point out again since there are a bunch of people advocating requiring a medicine check to use a stimpack, is that not every party has a doctor or a medic. In parties that don't have them, stimpacks are the best way those parties can heal without going to a hospital, which has it's own set of problems. Sure, somebody in the party probably has a medpac, but they aren't likely to be able to heal more than a couple wounds with it, let alone a serious crit. Medicine is one of the more uncommon career skills, especially in edge.

Probably the best suggestion I've seen on here is making stimpacks once per combat encounter, and heal 5 wounds each encounter. (To specify, each character may receive the benefit of one stimpack per encounter, not apply one stimpack per encounter, an important distinction for some characters). This has it's own set of disadvantages. In a really hard fight, the PCs won't have access to the kind of healing they used to, which matters because my experience is that fights in this system tend to vary widely in difficulty. In a 24 hour period with multiple combats, they may actually get more healing from this, which may be good or bad, depending on your point of view, but it just won't be all at once. The good thing about doing this though is it keeps the amount of healing available proportionate to the number of combat encounters.

38 minutes ago, awayputurwpn said:

This is d20 thinking dude.

WEG did it first, and its not an unusual mechanic (successful defence negates attack). As I was brought up on BRP-based games, its pretty much my default setting.

18 minutes ago, awayputurwpn said:

Aw come on, how can ya hate it if you've never tried it?

Give Saga a chance! It just seems to line up with all your expectations that I've read this far, especially where this game seems to disappoint or come down at odds with how you see the movies playing out in terms of game mechanics.

Saga was pretty solid between levels 3 and 9 and had some innovative ways to handle armor. Did a decent job with starfighters too. But D20 handles level scaling bad on higher levels unless theres room for demigodhood.