Does blast effect your original target?

By Degenerate Mind, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

Say, for example, that I threw a thermal detonator at Jabba the Hutt and hit him with one success and two advantages, giving me the base damage & blast effect. I know that his slaves and snacks are getting fried by 15 points of blast damage, and that Jabba is taking 20 points of damage, but does he ALSO take the bl ast damage?

No, the targets engaged with him. He takes the main hit. Unless you have a miss and can activate Blast, and then everyone would take just the Blast effect.

5 hours ago, Degenerate Mind said:

Say, for example, that I threw a thermal detonator at Jabba the Hutt and hit him with one success and two advantages, giving me the base damage & blast effect. I know that his slaves and snacks are getting fried by 15 points of blast damage, and that Jabba is taking 20 points of damage, but does he ALSO take the bl ast damage?

If you hit the original target, then Blast doesn't, so in your example, Jabby just takes the 21 points of damage from the thermal detonator (base 20 plus your 1 success) while everyone within the Blast's range* of Jabba is taking 16 damage from the Blast quality (base 15 plus your 1 success).

Where Blast gets interesting is that if you miss (i.e. no uncancelled successes) but rolled 3 advantage, then you can trigger the Blast quality, dealing 15 damage to everyone with the Blast quality's range of the original target as well as the target themselves.

*Do note that while the Blast quality's description gives the default range of engaged, a thermal detonator specifically spells out that its Blast quality affects everything within short range, which may very well include the thrower. Thus why it was such a ballsy negotiation technique on Boussh/Leia's part in Return of the Jedi, since odds were that both Jabba and Boussh would be taken out, and so impressed Jabba who is likely used to dealing with spineless sycophants day after day.

If I throw a grenade at a squad of three minions, could I use blast to add more damage to the group since they are engaged with the target? Or is the entire group considered a target?

From the Developers Answered Questions thread:

Blast and Minions

Question asked by Darth Pseudonym :

Should a group of minions be treated as a group of individuals who happen to share one wound pool, or as a single entity?
That is to say, if a blast goes off in the middle of a group of minions
-- should each minion, individually, take the blast damage, soak it, and apply the remainder to their shared pool, or
-- does the group as a whole get hit by the blast, take the damage, soak it once, and then apply the remainder (and if so, then does the group being the primary target exclude the group from being affected by the blast)?
Or is there some other methodology?

Answered by Sam Stewart:
The first option would be more thematically appropriate. That being said, if the minions were particularly spread out (if you had a group of four with two each behind two separate barricades, for example), I'd rule that some of the minions couldn't be hit by the blast damage. It does make grenades quite effective against minion groups; but that's sort of the idea in any case.

So it would seem that grenades are indeed intended to be very effective at clearing out minion groups. Which may be why a single frag grenade is Encumbrance 1, so that PCs aren't quite walking around with huge stocks of them and dispatching minion groups willy-nilly.

Hello,

Being we are talking about blast in reference to grenades, does it work the same with space weapons that have blast? Also does blast have the same breach quality as the original hit?

If an X-wing fires at a formation of 3 tie's with a proton torpedo and makes a successful hit.
Its base damage to the target is 8, and breach 6 to lower armor
the two nearby tie's take just the blast damage of 6? with or without breach?

If so my party and I have been doing damage way wrong for a while now... Oops

Thanks

Blast in ship's is GMs discretion.

Breach applies to everything.

Blast Quality

Question asked by Darth Pseudonym :

Does the blast of a weapon benefit from that weapon's pierce or breach rating? If they do, it seems to make missile tubes amazingly dangerous, as even their blast effect on a miss would deal 10 damage with breach 1 (which makes the damage virtually unsoakable).

Answer

Yes, blast damage benefits from pierce or breach. Yeah, missile tubes are pretty scary with that, and that is probably warranted!

1 hour ago, Banditks said:

Hello,

Being we are talking about blast in reference to grenades, does it work the same with space weapons that have blast? Also does blast have the same breach quality as the original hit?

If an X-wing fires at a formation of 3 tie's with a proton torpedo and makes a successful hit.
Its base damage to the target is 8, and breach 6 to lower armor
the two nearby tie's take just the blast damage of 6? with or without breach?

If so my party and I have been doing damage way wrong for a while now... Oops

Thanks

I think it got mentioned by Sam in an Order 66 podcast that the Blast quality in vehicle combat really isn't very useful, since the "short range" for Blast is specifically for character scale attacks, and that minimum distance between ships (close range) is a much greater distance than character scale's extreme range.

That said, it's entirely up to the GM that if they want to allow Blast to work against a minion group of fighters. Just bear in mind that doing so, especially given the weapons with Blast also have enough Breach rating to blow through starfighter armor, is going to emphasize the "rocket tag" aspect of starship combat, as a single torpedo could quite possibly wipe out an entire minion group of low-end snubfighters in a single shot.

thanks for the info, we haven't been using blast on near by fighters but when grenade blast didn't hit the target if the roll was successful i had to ask the next step question.

On ‎1‎/‎9‎/‎2018 at 6:46 PM, Banditks said:

thanks for the info, we haven't been using blast on near by fighters but when grenade blast didn't hit the target if the roll was successful i had to ask the next step question.

Per Blast, if your main attack missed and you've got enough advantage to trigger Blast, then yes you can damage the intended target that way.

For instance, you fire a concussion missile at an Imperial frigate, and due to the vagaries of chance you fail the Gunnery check but have 3 advantage to spend. You could trigger Blast to then deal the missile's damage to the frigate.

No, with regards to Blast in vehicle/starship combat, me personally I run my minion groups as always being engaged with one another, and that extends to TIE fighter squads. So at my table, an attack with the Blast quality would be able to affect the other members of the starfighter minion group, hit or miss.

I like the idea that a group of starfighters are probably engaged when on the ground, though. Represents what we see when a hangar is hit.

On 1/11/2018 at 10:45 AM, Darzil said:

I like the idea that a group of starfighters are probably engaged when on the ground, though. Represents what we see when a hangar is hit.

I definitely like the idea of blowing up a bunch of ships on the ground at once, and I suspect my players do too. I'm definitely going to be using that.

Also, in more general terms of the planetary scale blast: I would certainly allow the flak cannons from the Commander splat book to hit multiple fighters at once since they're designed to do that. Using a missile or laser to take out an entire squardon, however, is a bit ridiculous.