Hey, so I've been playing EoTE for a while and I've taken Extra Reloads gear and Spare Clip talent to ensure I don't run out of ammo in a shoot out.

However, I just realised that when shooting normally the difficulty is never upgraded, only increased. This means no red challenge dice will be used.

The only time a red challenge die might be used is when the shooting action could result in a catastrophe akin to the situation. For example: at an enemy engaged with an ally, or shooting near something that might detonate. In these cases you wouldn't run out of ammo, the potential catastrophe would occur.

With no chance of the Despair result coming up and my character "running out of ammo"... am I just wasting my experience and credits?

As soon as you start shooting at someone with a defensive talent like Adversary, Dodge or Side Step those red Challenge dice are going to be cropping up a lot. Then there's the GM flipping a Destiny Point to make your life more interesting, that also upgrades to a red. So no, unless your GM is going abnormally easy on your group then you haven't wasted your XP.

Although I should point out that if you have the Space Clip talent you don't really need to carry Extra Reloads around. Spare Clip ensures that you don't run out (at least not from dice results) of ammy in the first place.

Reds happen a lot when attacking. Any big boss will have at least one rank of adversary. Our characters are extremely high lvl now (over 1000 xp) and are fighting people with Adversary 3 or 4. That's a lot of red and a lot of chance for despair.

24 minutes ago, Krieger22 said:

Although I should point out that if you have the Space Clip talent you don't really need to carry Extra Reloads around. Spare Clip ensures that you don't run out (at least not from dice results) of ammy in the first place.

Krieger is correct, you really don't need Extra Reloads if you have that talent unless you are on an adventure where ammo is scarce and your GM is keeping track. You don't want to use up that Encumbrance on something you don't need to carry around.

Also your GM should be flipping DPs to upgrade often on all sorts of rolls including Combat, thats what they are for. The system is designed for both the Players and GM to flip often and if you're not upgrading or downgrading rolls often you're missing out on some of the fun

53 minutes ago, Krieger22 said:

As soon as you start shooting at someone with a defensive talent like Adversary, Dodge or Side Step those red Challenge dice are going to be cropping up a lot. Then there's the GM flipping a Destiny Point to make your life more interesting, that also upgrades to a red. So no, unless your GM is going abnormally easy on your group then you haven't wasted your XP.

Although I should point out that if you have the Space Clip talent you don't really need to carry Extra Reloads around. Spare Clip ensures that you don't run out (at least not from dice results) of ammy in the first place.

Thanks, this is really useful and I have let our GM know. He'd been taking it easy on us so far... I guess we are yet to face real adversaries.

If I can't run out of ammo... then I am dreading what the GM will think up for my character rolling a despair! Either way, I'll shoot my way out.

Thanks!

22 minutes ago, player3119211 said:

Thanks, this is really useful and I have let our GM know. He'd been taking it easy on us so far... I guess we are yet to face real adversaries.

If I can't run out of ammo... then I am dreading what the GM will think up for my character rolling a despair! Either way, I'll shoot my way out.

Thanks!

A good GM "should" make sure his players get to use their talents, but a common mostly unintentional habit is not using a despair to cause the guy with spare clip to run out of ammo so as to "not waste the despair" now that doesn't mean that the GM should be required to use EVERY despair you roll to make you run out of ammo, but he should "occasionally use it that way just because you have the talent even if he wasn't inclined to use despair that way (i.e. never uses other players' despair to make them run out of ammo) to make sure that you didn't waste your xp on the talent. And you can point him to this bit of GMing advice if you like.

The same goes for he should frequently adding black dice to rolls so that players with talents to remove black dice didn't waste their xp either, but so that isn't a placebo, he should be adding black dice to a lot of rolls even to players that don't have black dice removing talents.

Interestingly, Spare Clip only prevents running out of ammo from a despair. If you had a heavy blaster pistol, or other such item, you will still run out on the 3 threat.

7 minutes ago, Ahrimon said:

Interestingly, Spare Clip only prevents running out of ammo from a despair. If you had a heavy blaster pistol, or other such item, you will still run out on the 3 threat.

And technically, that is a different effect than the standard "Run out of Ammo" Despair result, so if wielding a weapon with that drawback, is rule a Despair could be spent too make you run out due to that. But if you're weapon isn't notoriously greedy on the ol' energy pack, then it can't be.

1 hour ago, Ahrimon said:

Interestingly, Spare Clip only prevents running out of ammo from a despair. If you had a heavy blaster pistol, or other such item, you will still run out on the 3 threat.

I know that's RAW but I've always run it as protecting against threat too because to me it seems "odd" for a talent that works against despair to not also work against threat

On 2018-02-10 at 2:26 PM, player3119211 said:

The only time a red challenge die might be used is when the shooting action could result in a catastrophe akin to the situation.

I consider it a waste of a good roll if there isn't at least one red die in play The use of destiny points should be continuous on both sides.

10 hours ago, player3119211 said:

I am dreading what the GM will think up for my character rolling a despair

PROTIP: come up with despair suggestions for the GM too.

(Also, suggestions on other player's despairs)

2 hours ago, Desslok said:

PROTIP: come up with despair suggestions for the GM too.

(Also, suggestions on other player's despairs)

Careful with that. Only do this if asked.

If its that players turn, its there turn to shape the story.

(I do not like overbearing PCs drowning out the quiet players in my games)

Certainly it's table dependant. Our group has no problems throwing out ideas for despairs and triumphs (or going "Naw, that's too powerful for just one despair) all the time, and nobody gets their toes stepped on. Often everyone will go with "Yeah, I like that idea!" to one of the random throw-outs.

On ‎2‎/‎12‎/‎2018 at 7:17 PM, Ahrimon said:

Interestingly, Spare Clip only prevents running out of ammo from a despair. If you had a heavy blaster pistol, or other such item, you will still run out on the 3 threat.

You could house rule that you can get an out of ammo on 1 Despair or 4 Threats.