Do you have to use the rules for two weapon combat to get the defensive abilities of this combination? I am a new GM for EOTE and one of my players found these weapons in the Fly Casual book and used his starting money on them (along with the extra obligation cash) and he now has pierce 5 melee attacks with 3 defensive dice. Also, is there any penalty for an engaged ranged weapon user to move out of engaged range and shoot a meleer? Opportunity attacks or setback dice? Thanks!

If an engaged PC or NPC is using melee or brawl it's always an average check (2 purple dices) if an engaged PC or NPC shoots with light range weapon upgrade difficulty +1 and if range heavy +2 and gunnery is just no possible to shoot. So no there are no attack of opportunity and no set back dice. If an engaged NPC use is free maneuver to change range band to short range, then shoot the PC melee user, it's legit. If the vibrorapier is a problem break it, by sunder or just damage it with multiple desaventage or failure. There is alot of stuff in the supplement book that can be used to make good combos maybe talk to your player reminding him or her that it's mostly narrative game not dnd. Usually if it doesn't give a cool movie scene then skip it. Breaking is vibrorapier just to break it sucks, but if it get broken during an epic fight against a big nemesis it will pass. Hope it helps.

To take gear from my group that i gave them by mistake, i had the group get captured. Since they were captured thry had little expectation to get their gear back, to them if felt more like story than stealing their stuff.

The disruptor rifle was a big peice i wanted out of their hands and the scene at the end with the adversary worked well. The player with the rifle was the last standing and only a couplen strain left. His last shot missed with 3 advantage but a despair. I asked him if he had thoughts on his despair, and he said he wanted it to overcharged and blow up, this way the bad guy couldn't get it back. The advantage knock out his current pistol (but you always carry a spare). The bad guy took his last shot to use stun to knock him out.

A few things... first off, the defensive on each weapon do not stack with each other, so together he only has defensive 2. Also remember that those setback die do not apply to ranged attacks.

Second, when he is two-weapon fighting he'll need to remember to increase the difficulty if he wants to try and activate a second bit of damage. If he does activate both, only one has pierce 5, the other just has pierce 1.

Finally, don't worry about his damage output. The fact is, this game is super rocket-taggy. It is way easier to dramatically ramp up damage than it is to ramp up defenses. Any yahoo with a blaster rifle can put down minions in a shot, and it only takes moderate investment to take down rivals that quickly too. The rapier does +2, so even with absolute maxxed brawn he's just got a base 9 damage, which honestly isn't that hot. And by the time he gets there, cortosis armored enemies can reasonably start showing up.

4 minutes ago, Genuine said:

A few things... first off, the defensive on each weapon do not stack with each other, so together he only has defensive 2. Also remember that those setback die do not apply to ranged attacks.

The recent errata has change this. Both weapons would contribute defense, to a maximum of 4.

2 minutes ago, Swordbreaker said:

The recent errata has change this. Both weapons would contribute defense, to a maximum of 4.

Really? Missed that. I'll have to go read it.

22 hours ago, Thelordoftherats said:

Do you have to use the rules for two weapon combat to get the defensive abilities of this combination? I am a new GM for EOTE and one of my players found these weapons in the Fly Casual book and used his starting money on them (along with the extra obligation cash) and he now has pierce 5 melee attacks with 3 defensive dice. Also, is there any penalty for an engaged ranged weapon user to move out of engaged range and shoot a meleer? Opportunity attacks or setback dice? Thanks!

The defensive qualities of the two weapons don't stack unless there is something special about the bladebreaker. So it's just the highest one which is 2. Pierce 5 is nasty with +2 damage, but not that much worse than what someone dishes out with a E-11 blaster carbine.

There is nothing, except for some talents, that prevents enemies from disengaging and shoot the swashbuckler at short range though. Which the two defensive dice won't help against. Blasters hurt when it's a difficulty of two dice.

2 hours ago, Darth Revenant said:

The defensive qualities of the two weapons don't stack unless there is something special about the bladebreaker. So it's just the highest one which is 2. Pierce 5 is nasty with +2 damage, but not that much worse than what someone dishes out with a E-11 blaster carbine.

There is nothing, except for some talents, that prevents enemies from disengaging and shoot the swashbuckler at short range though. Which the two defensive dice won't help against. Blasters hurt when it's a difficulty of two dice.

13 hours ago, Swordbreaker said:

The recent errata has change this. Both weapons would contribute defense, to a maximum of 4.

On 2018-04-13 at 3:44 AM, Swordbreaker said:

The recent errata has change this. Both weapons would contribute defense, to a maximum of 4.

I wouldn't interpret it like that. I wouldn't let you stack defense dice from the same source (Defensive in this case) but to each their own.

48 minutes ago, penpenpen said:

I wouldn't interpret it like that. I wouldn't let you stack defense dice from the same source (Defensive in this case) but to each their own.

Quote

There are two sources of defense: sources that stack, and sources that do not stack. You can think of this as sources that provide defense, and sources that increase defense.

Sources that provide defense (such as most armor) list the defense provided as a number, or say that they ‘provide’ defense. Some examples include:

• Armor
• Cover
• Certain talents
• Guarded Stance maneuver

These sources do not stack with each other. If a character could benefit from more than one of these sources of defense, the player chooses the best one.

However, other sources increase defense. These sources say they ‘increase’ defense, or they list the defense provided as a number with a ‘+’ sign in front of it. These sources of defense stack, both with each other and with any sources that provide defense.

If multiple sources that increase defense would increase a character’s defense higher than 4, the rating remains at 4.

Source .

1 hour ago, Swordbreaker said:

Source .

I'm well aware of the errata and have read it, re-read it, and decided that it seemed reasonable that you applied Defensive/Deflective once (preferably at the highest available value) rather than stacking it with itself, even if it stacks with other sources. The errata doesn't clearly say either way though so you might be right as well. The thing is, if you let dual wielding defensive weapons stack, you open up for quad wielding (for our besalisk and xexto friends) or people using armor weapons mounts as such to mount even more weapons with deflective, or even the dreaded dual-shield wielding. Now, this isn't huge issue since defense caps at 4, but I'd rather not set 4 as a default value. Ultimately, it doesn't really matter which one of us is right until we sit down for a game together (and, really, not even then as it's the GM's prerogative to set the rules).

...but, for curiosity's sake, I passed the question along to the devs. I'll keep you posted on any updates.

Thank you everyone for your replies. I am still learning the system and dice mechanics. I appreciate all of the feedback, which will make me a better GM for ETOE.