Thiere is an ongoing conversation in my group about strain damage that it is always better to do strain damage when possible.

I dissagree with that statement and i belive since you can heal strain via advantages and talants it is infact inferior in most situations

What do you guys think?

Entirely circumstantial. Strain damage can be pretty taxing on minions and rivals, as they suffer wounds and cannot recover strain normally, but PCs and nemeses have more means to recover strain and can have talents that mitigate and recover it.

From a moral standpoint, I could see the strain argument. From a strategic standpoint of prisoners being useful sometimes, I could see the the strain argument. From a strategic standpoint, I would argue that a lot of enemies that will be really dangerous in combat have high wound threshold but low strain threshold. Take your average Wookiee marauder, for example. Wound threshold is at least 17, probably more, but strain threshold might be around 10. That might be an overly specific example, but lots of “tanks” have comparatively low strain thresholds.

Advantages can work to get it back and some classes have talents to get it back, but everyone can use stimpacks. As a player i would only attack strain if I make it clear that i want to capture the enemy. Otherwise it feels like min maxing to me.

As a GM my players hate it when i attack their strain since it can limit their actions with talents, it also make the fear they are going to be captured.

Against NPCs, almost always. Strain is converted to damage against Minions and Rivals. A PC can recover strain damage using Advantage, but they cannot. Very few Nemesis-level NPCs have ST > WT; they're almost all equivalent or worse, in some cases *dramatically* worse (e.g. Rancors and Assassin Droids). A Nemesis can recover strain, sure, but they'll also be spending Strain for 2nd maneuvers, parries etc, and if they're recovering Strain they're not critting/triggering weapon abilities.

Against PCs, it's much less powerful.

One of the oft-overlooked bits about “stun setting” is that it only works within short range, unless the weapon’s description states otherwise.

Also, as stated, Nemeses can recover strain with advantage, just like players. And I make Nemeses tough. It’s rare for them to roll less than 4 dice for their primary combat ability, often with 3+ yellow dice. Last session, a Nemesis managed to roll a whopping 9 advantages in one turn. She didn’t succeed, but she shrugged off a ton of strain, convincing the PCs that lethal force was required.

On 4/15/2018 at 9:09 PM, abookfulblockhead said:

Last session, a Nemesis managed to roll a whopping 9 advantages in one turn. She didn’t succeed, but she shrugged off a ton of strain, convincing the PCs that lethal force was required.

Sorry for the threadomancy here, but it beats starting a new thread.

Is there any official word on whether you're supposed be able to spend multiple advantages at once to recover strain? The EotE core rules explicitly says it's just the one (unless it's been changed in reprints) but that parenthesis is curiously absent in the AoR and FaD books. I haven't seen anything in the FAQs nor found anything in the dev-answered questions thread.

The way were currently running it is just allowing the one point of strain to be recovered which, one way or another, at least keeps the combat encounters fairly short, but sure makes stun blasters the bane of jedi.

4 hours ago, penpenpen said:

Sorry for the threadomancy here, but it beats starting a new thread.

Is there any official word on whether you're supposed be able to spend multiple advantages at once to recover strain? The EotE core rules explicitly says it's just the one (unless it's been changed in reprints) but that parenthesis is curiously absent in the AoR and FaD books. I haven't seen anything in the FAQs nor found anything in the dev-answered questions thread.

The way were currently running it is just allowing the one point of strain to be recovered which, one way or another, at least keeps the combat encounters fairly short, but sure makes stun blasters the bane of jedi.

Table 6-2 in the EotE book I have says you can take the result more than once for recovering strain with Advantage.

6-2 is not supposed to be considered exhaustive or exclusive, so whatever makes a GM and their table feel good. The combat section says that in all 3 CRBs so there isn't a need for an official anything on the contents of table 6-2.

6 hours ago, Kallabecca said:

Table 6-2 in the EotE book I have says you can take the result more than once for recovering strain with Advantage.

Yeah, sorry, I misremebered, EotE explicitly says you can, while that particular parenthesis is removed in the other books.