4 minutes ago, Darth Revenant said:

Because they're tiny. So your average Chadra-Fan, who isn't a PC but rather a minion civilian with minimal training, is likely to have brawn 1. They're not even likely to bother a normal human by punching them, since the normal human's got 2 brawn and minimal training, your tiny Chadra-Fan would need to roll 2 successes on 1 green dice to even inflict damage on the human. With a hold out blaster they're able to deal 5 damage with one success, bringing the pain to the average human minion of soak 2 and 4 wounds, one good hit or two average hits and they're down.

The average person in the Star Wars galaxy is not a PC or a Nemesis, they're not even a rival. They're a minion with minimal stats. Most people aren't likely to need much more than a hold-out blaster in their life, it's a perfectly working gun for taking out or scaring off most people the average person is going to encounter. So it's a weapon that can do the job it was designed for. It just wasn't designed for military operations against well trained and well equipped enemies.

And when it comes to the level of technological advancement I think we're not likely to agree entirely. Miniturisation doesn't really seem like a Star Wars thing. If you shrink down the size of a machine then you get less power output from it, all weapons seem to use Tibanna gas for the plasma they're firing but there is a world of difference between a Turbo-Laser and E-11 blaster carbine. Hel, there is a world of difference between a E-11 and a heavy repeating blaster. The hold out blaster trades power for size.

Oh ok I see what you're saying about the chadra fan and I agree.

Yeah there has t be some accounting for size, I do cede that, but I feel like it's weird to have these weak weapons even if it's realistic. I also saw an awful lot of blaster direct hits in Rebels that were definitely not fatal, or at least not immediately fatal. Then there is Leia getting hit but in game terms I am sure she was wearing armor of some kind there.

Also what do you think about the hold out blaster against an unarmored foe, but one who has Enduring and a high Brawn from advancement? Just curious as to your take on that. Thanks for the discussion by the way, I enjoy your points and explanations.

1 minute ago, Archlyte said:

Oh ok I see what you're saying about the chadra fan and I agree.

Yeah there has t be some accounting for size, I do cede that, but I feel like it's weird to have these weak weapons even if it's realistic. I also saw an awful lot of blaster direct hits in Rebels that were definitely not fatal, or at least not immediately fatal. Then there is Leia getting hit but in game terms I am sure she was wearing armor of some kind there.

Also what do you think about the hold out blaster against an unarmored foe, but one who has Enduring and a high Brawn from advancement? Just curious as to your take on that. Thanks for the discussion by the way, I enjoy your points and explanations.

Going to have to get back at you for those. Work is approaching rapidly and might already be late. Main point I would make though, I'll get back to it later, is that blasters seemingly have crap penetration.

This is honestly a topic I've thought about quite a bit. I'm thinking of doing a major overhaul of the entire system, reworking several elements. I'm working on a new Crit chart that feels a little more threatening, changing how Personal v. Planetary Scale works and restatting every vehicle accordingly (naturally, this is taking a very long time), and also trying to figure out how to go about changing combat to make it feel more... Star Wars-esque, I suppose.

I'm thinking of having all blasters have a much smaller damage range. Instead of the massive 5-15 damage range that blasters come in from the CRB, I'm thinking of having it more along the lines of 8-12, so there's definitely still some variation in individual damage output, but not nearly as much as there currently is.

Blasters throughout all of Star Wars media tend to be capable of inflicting similar levels of damage regardless of whether you're using a pistol, carbine, or a rifle. Only when you start getting into the big repeating blasters do they seem to start having a more serious level of output. Characters with pistols, even holdout blasters, never seem to have much more difficulty than characters with blaster rifles when it comes to putting down foes. I feel like the biggest difference among all of these weapons should be things like range, reliability, pierce, and vicious, rather than just their base damage deciding the differences of the various blaster types. I'll just post some off-the-top-of-my-head examples (not playtested yet, but just to give an idea of what I mean).

Holdout Blaster: Damage 8, Crit 4, Range Short, Inaccurate 1, Stun Setting

When making an attack with a Holdout Blaster, upgrade the difficulty of your check twice. Add a setback to a character's Perception check when attempting to find a Holdout pistol on a person's body.

Light Blaster Pistol: Damage 8, Crit 4, Range Medium, Stun Setting

When making an attack with a Light Blaster Pistol, upgrade the difficulty of your check once.

Blaster Pistol: Damage 8, Crit 3, Range Medium, Pierce 1, Stun Setting, Vicious 1

When making an attack with a Blaster Pistol, upgrade the difficulty of your check once.

Heavy Blaster Pistol: Damage 9, Crit 2, Range Medium, Inaccurate 1, Pierce 2, Stun Setting, Vicious 2

When making an attack with a Heavy Blaster Pistol, upgrade the difficulty of your check twice.

Blaster Carbine: Damage 9, Crit 2, Range Medium, Pierce 2, Stun Setting, Vicious 3

Blaster Rifle: Damage 9, Crit 2, Range Long, Pierce 2, Stun Setting, Vicious 3

Heavy Blaster Rifle: Damage 10, Crit 2, Range Long, Auto-Fire, Cumbersome 3, Pierce 2, Vicious 3

The difficulty upgrades on the Holdout Blaster and blaster pistols is meant for one thing: triggering despairs to cause the weapons to run out of ammo. This is why the Holdout Blaster and Heavy Blaster Pistol both upgrade twice instead of once, as the two types of weapons are supposed to hold very few shots. Inaccurate on the Holdout Blaster is meant to represent the lack of any sort of sights on the weapon, while on the Heavy Blaster Pistol, it's meant to represent the recoil.

Now, naturally, with weapon stats like these, combat becomes far, far more dangerous. But honestly, I'd kind of prefer it that way. Someone points a blaster pistol at your face, and you should feel like you're genuinely threatened. As is, most of my players would scoff at something like a blaster pistol, unless it hammered away at them for then turns. With this change, getting hit by even a holdout blaster is far more devastating. And while the actual damage from a Heavy Blaster Rifle isn't too terribly great compared to a Holdout Blaster, the low crit rating, high pierce, and high vicious make it far deadlier in ways other than just flat damage.

16 hours ago, penpenpen said:

Soak is based off Brawn so you can deflect blaster bolts by flexing your manly pecs at them. That's why action heroes go shirtless, after all.

"Behold the power of... MUSCLE!!"
- Zangief, Street Fighter V

49 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

"Behold the power of... MUSCLE!!"
- Zangief, Street Fighter V

I may have posted a character concept along these lines...

8 hours ago, Underachiever599 said:

This is honestly a topic I've thought about quite a bit. I'm thinking of doing a major overhaul of the entire system, reworking several elements. I'm working on a new Crit chart that feels a little more threatening, changing how Personal v. Planetary Scale works and restatting every vehicle accordingly (naturally, this is taking a very long time), and also trying to figure out how to go about changing combat to make it feel more... Star Wars-esque, I suppose.

I'm thinking of having all blasters have a much smaller damage range. Instead of the massive 5-15 damage range that blasters come in from the CRB, I'm thinking of having it more along the lines of 8-12, so there's definitely still some variation in individual damage output, but not nearly as much as there currently is.

Blasters throughout all of Star Wars media tend to be capable of inflicting similar levels of damage regardless of whether you're using a pistol, carbine, or a rifle. Only when you start getting into the big repeating blasters do they seem to start having a more serious level of output. Characters with pistols, even holdout blasters, never seem to have much more difficulty than characters with blaster rifles when it comes to putting down foes. I feel like the biggest difference among all of these weapons should be things like range, reliability, pierce, and vicious, rather than just their base damage deciding the differences of the various blaster types. I'll just post some off-the-top-of-my-head examples (not playtested yet, but just to give an idea of what I mean).

Holdout Blaster: Damage 8, Crit 4, Range Short, Inaccurate 1, Stun Setting

When making an attack with a Holdout Blaster, upgrade the difficulty of your check twice. Add a setback to a character's Perception check when attempting to find a Holdout pistol on a person's body.

Light Blaster Pistol: Damage 8, Crit 4, Range Medium, Stun Setting

When making an attack with a Light Blaster Pistol, upgrade the difficulty of your check once.

Blaster Pistol: Damage 8, Crit 3, Range Medium, Pierce 1, Stun Setting, Vicious 1

When making an attack with a Blaster Pistol, upgrade the difficulty of your check once.

Heavy Blaster Pistol: Damage 9, Crit 2, Range Medium, Inaccurate 1, Pierce 2, Stun Setting, Vicious 2

When making an attack with a Heavy Blaster Pistol, upgrade the difficulty of your check twice.

Blaster Carbine: Damage 9, Crit 2, Range Medium, Pierce 2, Stun Setting, Vicious 3

Blaster Rifle: Damage 9, Crit 2, Range Long, Pierce 2, Stun Setting, Vicious 3

Heavy Blaster Rifle: Damage 10, Crit 2, Range Long, Auto-Fire, Cumbersome 3, Pierce 2, Vicious 3

The difficulty upgrades on the Holdout Blaster and blaster pistols is meant for one thing: triggering despairs to cause the weapons to run out of ammo. This is why the Holdout Blaster and Heavy Blaster Pistol both upgrade twice instead of once, as the two types of weapons are supposed to hold very few shots. Inaccurate on the Holdout Blaster is meant to represent the lack of any sort of sights on the weapon, while on the Heavy Blaster Pistol, it's meant to represent the recoil.

Now, naturally, with weapon stats like these, combat becomes far, far more dangerous. But honestly, I'd kind of prefer it that way. Someone points a blaster pistol at your face, and you should feel like you're genuinely threatened. As is, most of my players would scoff at something like a blaster pistol, unless it hammered away at them for then turns. With this change, getting hit by even a holdout blaster is far more devastating. And while the actual damage from a Heavy Blaster Rifle isn't too terribly great compared to a Holdout Blaster, the low crit rating, high pierce, and high vicious make it far deadlier in ways other than just flat damage.

This, totally this. I also really like the rest of what you are doing to include compressing the damage of the blasters as a whole. But that quote is super important as far as the style of play I'm looking for. Thank you for posting this.

11 hours ago, Archlyte said:

That's a great idea, thanks for sharing it. Did you envision the other weapons not having it and it would be just sort of a counter for the pistols against the utility of the bigger guns?

That was the thought, yes. As I understand it, you're looking for a way to have pistols pack more punch without invalidating rifles. The way I'm seeing this, rifles can reach out to long or extreme range, and carbines do better than pistol damage even if they are only a medium range weapon. Pumping up pistol damage at engaged and short would be an easy adjustment that gives them a clear place to shine, and it makes up close combat extremely lethal.

Haven't read the whole thread, but I just wanted to add that I think this isn't a problem with the FFG rules specifically.

It's a problem with RPG's in general.

Guns (or any weapon, really) are dangerous.

You get shot, there's a great chance you'll die or have life-altering injuries.

But then, we're not playing a real-life simulator.

If you want to make blasters "death-dealers", then you're changing the games narrative from that of a swashbuckling space opera into a dark and grim hard sci-fi. Because damage works both ways, and you'll have player characters dropping like flies.


What you should do instead is to lower the health of enemies.
Make THEM drop like flies instead.
The players should still be heroes.

1 hour ago, OddballE8 said:

Haven't read the whole thread, but I just wanted to add that I think this isn't a problem with the FFG rules specifically.

It's a problem with RPG's in general.

Guns (or any weapon, really) are dangerous.

You get shot, there's a great chance you'll die or have life-altering injuries.

There's a few RPGs that try for a more "realistic" approach to firearms, and they're incredibly lethal to PC and Adversary alike. A prime example would be the old Cyberpunk 2020 RPG, which was rather notorious for being a meat-grinder if your character wasn't decked out in body armor before getting into a firefight, and even then a headshot meant it was time to roll up a new character.

1 hour ago, OddballE8 said:

Haven't read the whole thread, but I just wanted to add that I think this isn't a problem with the FFG rules specifically.

It's a problem with RPG's in general.

Guns (or any weapon, really) are dangerous.

You get shot, there's a great chance you'll die or have life-altering injuries.

But then, we're not playing a real-life simulator.

If you want to make blasters "death-dealers", then you're changing the games narrative from that of a swashbuckling space opera into a dark and grim hard sci-fi. Because damage works both ways, and you'll have player characters dropping like flies.


What you should do instead is to lower the health of enemies.
Make THEM drop like flies instead.
The players should still be heroes.

PC's as Heroes: Well that's a style of play for the PC's to still be heroes but this is a hobby that has room for all kinds of different narratives and styles. I for one have authored threads talking about things that I feel do and do not go with the theme of the movies, so I will certainly cede that it's not particularly Star Wars to have main characters being dropped by incidental bad guys. But then again those are stories and not situations where players have the freedom to react to the environment in different ways. There is a spectrum too between full-on abstraction and Real-Life simulator, and dialing in our games to our preference along that spectrum is our prerogative. I feel like the first star wars movie has a ton of death in it but Main Characters have perfect plot armor. I think that is what you get in a lot of High level D&D games--PC's with immunity to most danger--and then the fantasy is realized.

I think that lowering the health of enemies is no more valid than raising the damage of guns unless you just aesthetically dislike larger integers. If you want it to be like the movies, then just automatically give each PC the Talent "Hero" and raise their Soak by two and give them the same effect as Adversary.

Realistic Bullet Effect: In FATE and games that have wound tracks, you will find that they work a bit more realistic in some ways because while there is a tick off, you can get consequences for the wounds fairly quickly. This represents that the grazing wound, the penetration wound, and the catastrophic or fatal GSW are about the only choices and have a ratio more like what you mentioned so correctly (in my opinion) in your post.

12 hours ago, Archlyte said:

Oh ok I see what you're saying about the chadra fan and I agree.

Yeah there has t be some accounting for size, I do cede that, but I feel like it's weird to have these weak weapons even if it's realistic. I also saw an awful lot of blaster direct hits in Rebels that were definitely not fatal, or at least not immediately fatal. Then there is Leia getting hit but in game terms I am sure she was wearing armor of some kind there.

Also what do you think about the hold out blaster against an unarmored foe, but one who has Enduring and a high Brawn from advancement? Just curious as to your take on that. Thanks for the discussion by the way, I enjoy your points and explanations.

So, time for this stuff. So, in my mind, blasters carry a lot of stopping power and can do some rather horrific damage. But they don't seem to penetrate all that deeply. So someone who is hit is likely to be knocked off their feet and very possibly knocked out. The wound is probably going to be a pretty bad one, seeing as how they have just had a portion of their skin burned severely and possibly have internal burns underneath their skin. Bulk and glancing hits could help against that, since part of the energy bleeds off in a different direction.

Then there is the fact that Star Wars is not a realistic setting. It's a setting where there has been a sort of stable central government for over 24 000 years. That's longer than human beings have been proper agrarian settlers. They have written records stretching as far back as that. We have cave paintings that are that old. They have holograms of people who lived back then. This is a silly huge span of time. But that's a side note.

The main thing is that it's a cinematic setting of big god **** heroes. Your players are the heroes in a Hollywood style tale. They're Rambo, they're John Matrix, they're Luc Deveroux or Leon. I would argue that John Matrix is a hired gun with heavy gunner who decided to use his signature ability, that would explain the whole storming of the mansion.

Anyway, the point is that any hit that's not a crit is just a glancing flesh wound, something that would bring down a lesser person, but not Squat Bulkthrust the epic action hero. And while it might hurt his trusted companion, Nerds McSpectacle the computer whiz, or slightly impair the hotheaded maverick Hotair Gabbington the III it's not something that will pose a super serious threat to them. Because they're the heroes of the story. That's not to say that things shouldn't be dangerous, or that PC's can't die due to poor choices. But they shouldn't just go down like chumps to some old lady with a hold out blaster, unless they have already been hit a whole bunch before and they're just about to make a daring get away in her airspeeder.

Guns are dangerous in real life. But this isn't real life. There are other systems that are better at representing that. To me this is a setting where you pull a gun on a martial artist and see her smirk before she disassembles your gun in the blink of an eye and dissembles your arm in a slightly longer and more painful way. Hits to the PC's or important story characters are glancing hits, things that cause painful and serious burns. But nothing a bacta bandaid and some rest won't fix. Crits are worse hits, but a bit of gunpowder in a wound and some dramatic shouting can fix that. Because the story of how a PC had to go through years of grueling and painful physical therapy after they were gutshot by a Twi'Lek kid trying to mug them doesn't make for very interesting drama, but it can be a decent backstory.

10 minutes ago, Darth Revenant said:

So, time for this stuff. So, in my mind, blasters carry a lot of stopping power and can do some rather horrific damage. But they don't seem to penetrate all that deeply. So someone who is hit is likely to be knocked off their feet and very possibly knocked out. The wound is probably going to be a pretty bad one, seeing as how they have just had a portion of their skin burned severely and possibly have internal burns underneath their skin. Bulk and glancing hits could help against that, since part of the energy bleeds off in a different direction.

Then there is the fact that Star Wars is not a realistic setting. It's a setting where there has been a sort of stable central government for over 24 000 years. That's longer than human beings have been proper agrarian settlers. They have written records stretching as far back as that. We have cave paintings that are that old. They have holograms of people who lived back then. This is a silly huge span of time. But that's a side note.

The main thing is that it's a cinematic setting of big god **** heroes. Your players are the heroes in a Hollywood style tale. They're Rambo, they're John Matrix, they're Luc Deveroux or Leon. I would argue that John Matrix is a hired gun with heavy gunner who decided to use his signature ability, that would explain the whole storming of the mansion.

Anyway, the point is that any hit that's not a crit is just a glancing flesh wound, something that would bring down a lesser person, but not Squat Bulkthrust the epic action hero. And while it might hurt his trusted companion, Nerds McSpectacle the computer whiz, or slightly impair the hotheaded maverick Hotair Gabbington the III it's not something that will pose a super serious threat to them. Because they're the heroes of the story. That's not to say that things shouldn't be dangerous, or that PC's can't die due to poor choices. But they shouldn't just go down like chumps to some old lady with a hold out blaster, unless they have already been hit a whole bunch before and they're just about to make a daring get away in her airspeeder.

Guns are dangerous in real life. But this isn't real life. There are other systems that are better at representing that. To me this is a setting where you pull a gun on a martial artist and see her smirk before she disassembles your gun in the blink of an eye and dissembles your arm in a slightly longer and more painful way. Hits to the PC's or important story characters are glancing hits, things that cause painful and serious burns. But nothing a bacta bandaid and some rest won't fix. Crits are worse hits, but a bit of gunpowder in a wound and some dramatic shouting can fix that. Because the story of how a PC had to go through years of grueling and painful physical therapy after they were gutshot by a Twi'Lek kid trying to mug them doesn't make for very interesting drama, but it can be a decent backstory.

Ok all great points and good reading, thank you for taking the time and coming back to explain more fully. I think in some ways you have convinced me somewhat about how blasters are depicted, but I need some more elaboration. So it seems like you have heroes who basically aren't supposed to get killed really because it's cinematic. You can't have debilitating illness or lingering wounds, because the consequences of battle are binary (fine or dead). Yet heroes do die in stories, although this is rarely the viewpoint character or those closest to them. How do you adjudicate the ratio of these events in the game?

So basically, how do you know when to have a wound that is terrible, or fatal when it comes to dealing with the PC's?

Furthermore, I have to ask that if you are deciding what and when you have a fatal wound, then what's the point of the dice? Or are you of the idea that the dice are just a guide? I personally never fudge Dice results or modifiers, because I like to have something external to all the people in the game that gives us the random factor, but I play in a very simulationist style and don't want to know how a scene ends any more than the players.

25 minutes ago, Archlyte said:

Ok all great points and good reading, thank you for taking the time and coming back to explain more fully. I think in some ways you have convinced me somewhat about how blasters are depicted, but I need some more elaboration. So it seems like you have heroes who basically aren't supposed to get killed really because it's cinematic. You can't have debilitating illness or lingering wounds, because the consequences of battle are binary (fine or dead). Yet heroes do die in stories, although this is rarely the viewpoint character or those closest to them. How do you adjudicate the ratio of these events in the game?

So basically, how do you know when to have a wound that is terrible, or fatal when it comes to dealing with the PC's?

Furthermore, I have to ask that if you are deciding what and when you have a fatal wound, then what's the point of the dice? Or are you of the idea that the dice are just a guide? I personally never fudge Dice results or modifiers, because I like to have something external to all the people in the game that gives us the random factor, but I play in a very simulationist style and don't want to know how a scene ends any more than the players.

The dice are there to add an element of random chance. Last game a NPC tried get my character to pay for information that another party member had already paid for, I knew this as a player, but since my character had not spoken with that other character about these events my character didn't know this. He's of average perception but the slice is way above average as a liar, but we decided to roll for it anyway. I had YG and a boost dice for it against RPP and a setback dice, seemed like an almost foregone conclusion that I would need to shell out 300 credits that I barely had. Succeded without any threats and got the info without paying.

As for fatal wounds, that's what the crit table is for. While many crits are anemic, they do stack up. Especially against someone who doesn't have tons of ranks in durable, the ones who aren't John Rambo or John Matrix. A stimpack will get someone back up and keep them going, for a while. But crits quickly stack up and will require medical assistance. The natural rate of healing for them is low, roll resilience against your hardest crit a week after said crit hit you. Then wait another week for another attempt. And stimpacks do nothing when it comes to crits, for that you need a trained medical professional, someone smart or a bacta tank.

To take an example from play, I play a seriously tanky bastard. He's not maurauder levels tanky, but he's a force sensitive and runs around with brawn 6 and a high WT. I recently got into a fight with vibroweapons against another bulky nemesis. He was just 5 brawn, but a cyborg with 10 soak. We both had vibroweapons with a bit of vicious to them, low crit ratings and pierce. During that fight I took 5 crits, several of them rather bad. Thank god for ranks in durable. I would almost definitely have lost and possibly died if not for Heroic Fortitude. When he hit me with the last crit, he rolled +60 on the list thanks to having vicious 2 on his weapons. Death was very much an option. It was a truly brutal fight, that ended with my character cutting into his torso and biting his face off, since I had lost my other arm to one of the crits. Then there was an desperate escape after that and death was near, my character went down again and this time it was +50 on the crits since it was the sixth crit that hit me. Got lucky and got up again, made the escape. We don't have a good doctor on hand though, nor a bacta tank. So now my character is going to have to go through a somewhat lengthy recovery process. Previously he's also been close to dying due to getting shoot by a starfighter weapon as well as when getting lost in a force vergence labyrinth. But he's a big god **** action hero type so he gets up, winces in pain and walks it off. Until the day he doesn't, but I won't mind as long as it's a cool enough ending for him.

So the dice are there to add an element of randomness, which they do a rather good job of. I tend to not fudge dice results either, I don't think our DM does either. And it's great fun, because sometimes you succeed with something you didn't think you would manage, and at other times you fail with 3 triumphs (which happened during the epic duel). All of this takes a bit of time to get used to, but it can be a whole bucket load of fun.

To go with the cinematic feel as well, some times it's just the right time for a character to go. They have had a good arc and have a perfect moment to go out in a poignant way that will leave a lasting impact. As a player I feel I have a responsibility to the story as well. Much like the GM crafts epic moments that allow my character to shine, I need to be aware of moments where my actions can contribute to the story. Sometimes that's agreeing that my 6+ foot tall Zabrak dark side warrior gets intimidated by the 2 foot tall chadra fan with a blaster, because the guy managed to roll a succesful coerce. Other times it's agreeing that my character is in an unwinnable situation, flipping a destiny token and saying that he sees the self destruct button for the Star Destroyer. He can't get out, so he records a last good bye to the crew and then flips that switch like a big god **** action hero. Because that's what the story needs.

3 hours ago, Archlyte said:

Ok all great points and good reading, thank you for taking the time and coming back to explain more fully. I think in some ways you have convinced me somewhat about how blasters are depicted, but I need some more elaboration. So it seems like you have heroes who basically aren't supposed to get killed really because it's cinematic. You can't have debilitating illness or lingering wounds, because the consequences of battle are binary (fine or dead). Yet heroes do die in stories, although this is rarely the viewpoint character or those closest to them. How do you adjudicate the ratio of these events in the game?

So basically, how do you know when to have a wound that is terrible, or fatal when it comes to dealing with the PC's?

Furthermore, I have to ask that if you are deciding what and when you have a fatal wound, then what's the point of the dice? Or are you of the idea that the dice are just a guide? I personally never fudge Dice results or modifiers, because I like to have something external to all the people in the game that gives us the random factor, but I play in a very simulationist style and don't want to know how a scene ends any more than the players.

I think the key thing is with PC death in this game is that, you will be knocked out from blaster fire from time to time. but you most likely won't die (unless your rocking a lot of crits)

PCs don't die from being shot, thats boring. PCs die from cinematic moments, such as leaping from that shot up gunship to deflect that incoming missile with your body, or loosing a gruelling duel to the Grand Inquisitor, or trying to stop plannets colliding with your face (Chewie....)

Look at all the Character deaths in the movies, Only one died by blaster. You had:

Lighstaber to the heart

Beheaded by lightsaber x2

Smashed by a 2000m rockwave

Blown up by Proton Torpedo

Shot to the sith by Death Troopers (only after a heroic discipline check - Chirut [success with 2 dispair?)

Blown up by grenade x2

Drowned? by a 200m tidalwave

Sliced into a force spectre by lightsaber

Shot down by Darth Vader in a TIE

Choked by Slave Liea

Eaten by a Sarlacc (or is he?)

Thrown into a hyperreactor by your treacherous apprentice

Sliced by treacherous apprentice's grandson

Stabbed in the heart by treacherous apprentice's grandson

Blown up by Proton Torpedo to the Bridge without any heroic onscreen final words (Vale Admiral Ackbar)

Falling into a raging explosion after fighting a Traitor (Or did she?)

Heart attack after projeceting himself across the galaxy to piss off the treacherous apprentice's grandson

I think a major part of the problem is the ease of risk management in RPG.

If someone points a gun at your PCs and you know that there's a 20% chance that a shot will kill or seriously injure the PC, you'd probably consider it decent odds and have the PC rush the shooter.

If someone points a gun at you and you estimate that there's a 20% chance that a shot will kill or seriously injure you , you'd might want to hold off rushing the shooter until you have no other choice.

PC's tend to be very cavalier about personal injury, especially since most RPG systems, even those with fairly "dangerous" damage systems, tend to make recovery a fairly trivial, quick and predictable because convalescence isn't very fun to play.

22 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

There's a few RPGs that try for a more "realistic" approach to firearms, and they're incredibly lethal to PC and Adversary alike. A prime example would be the old Cyberpunk 2020 RPG, which was rather notorious for being a meat-grinder if your character wasn't decked out in body armor before getting into a firefight, and even then a headshot meant it was time to roll up a new character.

Trust me, I know.
I've played (and GM'd) both the Swedish games Neotech and Eon... both were hard-core realistic in their damage.

And it lead to fun situations like when the 2 meter tall barbarian with a greatsword hid from the town guard behind a door because "have you seen those halberds! They're pointy as **** and look crazy dangerous!".
Or when in Neotech (a cyberpunk-ish game) the players made a commando raid on a mobsters villa and one of them got shot in the leg on the way in. The others left him there, saying "we'll get you when we come back" but he died from blood loss by the time they came back.

No, I mean RPG's in general.

Weapons tend to not be as deadly as they are in real life.
Which also leads to situations where the players get a gun shoved in their face and go "I'll attack the guy shoving a gun in my face", because they know there's a fair chance they'll survive getting shot in the face.
And that's not a problem with the rules, per-say.
That's a problem with the players not understanding the difference between getting shot in the face point blank and shot at in chaotic combat where everyones running around and getting into cover and the like.

You get shot in the face point plank, you die.
You get shot at and hit in chaotic combat while running around trying to avoid enemy fire... that might mean you just get your ear shot of.

There's usually rules for "mercy killing" or instantly killing someone who's not aware of the attack. Like stabbing someone who's sleeping or unconcious.
Getting a gun shoved in your face point blank should invoke the same rule, IMHO, since there's no way the player will avoid getting shot in the face if he tries something. (unless it's something VERY creative).

But it's important that the players are aware of this, and don't think that initiating combat while the enemy has the drop on you, outnumber you and are combat-prepared is a good idea.

If anyone puts a gun in the face (or back or chest or whatever) on one of my players... they KNOW that the enemy WILL kill them if they pull the trigger.
So they act accordingly.

However, I do this exceedingly sparingly since you really shouldn't put players in no-win scenarios if you can avoid it... they tend to not enjoy it.

On ‎3‎/‎7‎/‎2018 at 4:07 PM, Funk Fu master said:

I think the key thing is with PC death in this game is that, you will be knocked out from blaster fire from time to time. but you most likely won't die (unless your rocking a lot of crits)

PCs don't die from being shot, thats boring. PCs die from cinematic moments, such as leaping from that shot up gunship to deflect that incoming missile with your body, or loosing a gruelling duel to the Grand Inquisitor, or trying to stop plannets colliding with your face (Chewie....)

Look at all the Character deaths in the movies, Only one died by blaster. You had:

Lighstaber to the heart

Beheaded by lightsaber x2

Smashed by a 2000m rockwave

Blown up by Proton Torpedo

Shot to the sith by Death Troopers (only after a heroic discipline check - Chirut [success with 2 dispair?)

Blown up by grenade x2

Drowned? by a 200m tidalwave

Sliced into a force spectre by lightsaber

Shot down by Darth Vader in a TIE

Choked by Slave Liea

Eaten by a Sarlacc (or is he?)

Thrown into a hyperreactor by your treacherous apprentice

Sliced by treacherous apprentice's grandson

Stabbed in the heart by treacherous apprentice's grandson

Blown up by Proton Torpedo to the Bridge without any heroic onscreen final words (Vale Admiral Ackbar)

Falling into a raging explosion after fighting a Traitor (Or did she?)

Heart attack after projeceting himself across the galaxy to piss off the treacherous apprentice's grandson

Well I appreciate the descriptive approach you used for your examples, but in combat when a player in a cantina points a blaster at another character and attacks and kills the other character, I'm not going to make an asteroid hit him. I think you are right, that this should be spiced up as much as possible, but for the sake of this argument I am talking about Blaster Pistols and death resulting from them.

I did enjoy reading all of those though

On ‎3‎/‎7‎/‎2018 at 1:36 PM, Darth Revenant said:

The dice are there to add an element of random chance. Last game a NPC tried get my character to pay for information that another party member had already paid for, I knew this as a player, but since my character had not spoken with that other character about these events my character didn't know this. He's of average perception but the slice is way above average as a liar, but we decided to roll for it anyway. I had YG and a boost dice for it against RPP and a setback dice, seemed like an almost foregone conclusion that I would need to shell out 300 credits that I barely had. Succeded without any threats and got the info without paying.

As for fatal wounds, that's what the crit table is for. While many crits are anemic, they do stack up. Especially against someone who doesn't have tons of ranks in durable, the ones who aren't John Rambo or John Matrix. A stimpack will get someone back up and keep them going, for a while. But crits quickly stack up and will require medical assistance. The natural rate of healing for them is low, roll resilience against your hardest crit a week after said crit hit you. Then wait another week for another attempt. And stimpacks do nothing when it comes to crits, for that you need a trained medical professional, someone smart or a bacta tank.

To take an example from play, I play a seriously tanky bastard. He's not maurauder levels tanky, but he's a force sensitive and runs around with brawn 6 and a high WT. I recently got into a fight with vibroweapons against another bulky nemesis. He was just 5 brawn, but a cyborg with 10 soak. We both had vibroweapons with a bit of vicious to them, low crit ratings and pierce. During that fight I took 5 crits, several of them rather bad. Thank god for ranks in durable. I would almost definitely have lost and possibly died if not for Heroic Fortitude. When he hit me with the last crit, he rolled +60 on the list thanks to having vicious 2 on his weapons. Death was very much an option. It was a truly brutal fight, that ended with my character cutting into his torso and biting his face off, since I had lost my other arm to one of the crits. Then there was an desperate escape after that and death was near, my character went down again and this time it was +50 on the crits since it was the sixth crit that hit me. Got lucky and got up again, made the escape. We don't have a good doctor on hand though, nor a bacta tank. So now my character is going to have to go through a somewhat lengthy recovery process. Previously he's also been close to dying due to getting shoot by a starfighter weapon as well as when getting lost in a force vergence labyrinth. But he's a big god **** action hero type so he gets up, winces in pain and walks it off. Until the day he doesn't, but I won't mind as long as it's a cool enough ending for him.

So the dice are there to add an element of randomness, which they do a rather good job of. I tend to not fudge dice results either, I don't think our DM does either. And it's great fun, because sometimes you succeed with something you didn't think you would manage, and at other times you fail with 3 triumphs (which happened during the epic duel). All of this takes a bit of time to get used to, but it can be a whole bucket load of fun.

To go with the cinematic feel as well, some times it's just the right time for a character to go. They have had a good arc and have a perfect moment to go out in a poignant way that will leave a lasting impact. As a player I feel I have a responsibility to the story as well. Much like the GM crafts epic moments that allow my character to shine, I need to be aware of moments where my actions can contribute to the story. Sometimes that's agreeing that my 6+ foot tall Zabrak dark side warrior gets intimidated by the 2 foot tall chadra fan with a blaster, because the guy managed to roll a succesful coerce. Other times it's agreeing that my character is in an unwinnable situation, flipping a destiny token and saying that he sees the self destruct button for the Star Destroyer. He can't get out, so he records a last good bye to the crew and then flips that switch like a big god **** action hero. Because that's what the story needs.

First off: kudos to you for that statement about being ok with a death as long as it feel heroic. I always admire fellow hobbyists who can enjoy the bad with the good. Your character endured 5 critical hits in 1 combat, and I am glad he lived. But the failed healing of those crits after the effects wear off (assuming it's not limb loss etc.) means only that you are more likely to get a bad critical hit if attacked, so it's kind of more like your luck has run slim as I see it, even though they explain the process like it's physical healing.

I think though that what you are saying is that you like the kind of combat I have seen called "tree chopping." A successive number of attacks and counter attacks where the characters are all going to be fighting until we watch their health bars shrink down to zero incrementally. Occasionally the dice will slam someone early, but more often than not combat is, "Initiative. Ok lets count all that up. Ok you guys go first, who are you having act? Ok you got three successes and two threat so that means you are gonna do 12 damage but only 4 gets through. He's hit but not too bad..." repeat for 4+ more rounds in a metered flow where on average its taking a lot of hits to even inconvenience a character. Or the asymmetrical version where you are chopped slowly but because the GM mainly puts you up against minions they go down like scythed wheat.

Also by your description it sounds like you are playing pre-made adventures where the GM "crafts epic moments," and that is another difference because I don't believe in running prepped stuff and I enjoy finding those moments spontaneously with the players, so I very much appreciate your statement about the players having a responsibility too. In my game they have more responsibility than I do because I abdicate it to them and the dice. I only bring that up because I think it highlights why you and I see combat differently. I need combat to be scary and decisive so that if someone does something brave, it's really brave.

But when the combat is already keyed out for you, then you need to get through encounters A,B, & C, so you can be ready to fight D (Boss Fight). That would indicate that you guys not lose too much before the main fight, and the GM have a vested interest in that. I have seen GM's fudge it so bad that the players literally were not allowed to lose. To me that is the opposite of action and heroism.

So respectfully, I think that linear gameplay vs. emergent may be a significant factor in how you see the role of combat vs. how I see it. I feel like the weakness of pistols incentivizes characters (not players necessarily) to use bigger guns because in the hands of the average character a pistol doesn't kill. That means that the story gets locked into a form of having big damage weapons, or the combats are extended merely because the weapons are not strong enough. There are so many other factors that should make for the character's surviving a fire fight. The enemy having half-assed guns is a lame one in my opinion.