13 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

Clearly I don't agree with you all. I see no point in having separate skills in all of your examples, frankly all one would need is 5 ranks in Breathing, and then be able to spin up relevance regardless of the situation.

I don't understand. In what way would being able to rattle somebody not be useful in combat? Or going and tipping over boxes to disrupt a shot? Or anything like that. Surely those all shouldn't be resolved with just "combat" skills? There's a lot more to a fight than just attack-move-attack-move.

There are Talents that already accomplish what you're after in terms of social skills, so if you let anybody "just do them" you invalidate the point of the Talents. Scathing Tirade and Inspiring Rhetoric are great choices for social characters in a combat situation, and there are several Leadership-based Talents that are useful for generating boost dice as well.

Personally, I'd say, no, non-combat skills don't translate to combat. The idea is absurd, because the definition's in the word. You're not going to do damage, cause crits, etc no matter how seductively you undress.

But can you can certainly influence the path of the encounter. If somebody wanted to "scream in the enemy's face", sure I'd let them roll Coercion and spread a couple boost dice around. Big deal. They'd have been better off taking a shot with their holdout pistol and Aiming twice, but it adds flavour. Maybe on a Triumph the enemy would have to make a Fear check (unless they already passed one). So you can certainly be creative with it.

However, I wouldn't necessarily encourage that kind of thing on a regular basis. What I would do instead is make a point of having things the non-coms could do in each encounter (rig some cover, find a way out of the cul-de-sac, jam transmissions) that let the non-coms bring their talents to bear in a more interesting way. Why scream in someone's face when you could take a couple rounds and make a laser-net out of empty cans, a bottle of whiskey, and a power pack?

Also, even the socially-oriented sourcebooks make a point of noting that social skills have limited use. Even if you have the Talent, you can't use Scathing Tirade indefinitely ... at some point the insults are ignored, or worse, the Stormtrooper commander yells "Target everything you've got at the clown!" And those guidelines are for people with the actual Talents, not some Talent-less schmo who thinks he's funny.

Obviously YMMV, but the TLDR here is that if you let your non-coms get away with too much early on, you'll have a hard time justifying what they can do later.

6 hours ago, swammeyjoe said:

Yeah, I guess attacking might be the right call if you've got a combat heavy character, but even beyond narrative considerations, for a non-combat character, if you can pass along 2-4 boost dice (can you pass 2 via advantage? I know you can't do the individual spends more than once but there are two different options for granting boost dice) that's a ~15-30% success chance increase. And if you can stack that with the Assist maneuver and roll well, you're looking at a nice handful of boost dice.

Maybe I'm trying to think about this too hard, but if you've got poor combat skills it might be significantly easier to make a non-combat check, especially if the target has defense and/or good enough soak that you're weak pistol shot wouldn't do much in the first place.

The way I always look at this is what would my character do. Getting in the head of my PC means more than any number crunch. I may start with a concept or idea for my PC but once (s)he’s established the actions are an extension of who they are. My tech minded Verpine reacts very differently to combat situations then my traumatized mirilian Mechanic.

49 minutes ago, whafrog said:

There are Talents that already accomplish what you're after in terms of social skills, so if you let anybody "just do them" you invalidate the point of the Talents. Scathing Tirade and Inspiring Rhetoric are great choices for social characters in a combat situation, and there are several Leadership-based Talents that are useful for generating boost dice as well.

Personally, I'd say, no, non-combat skills don't translate to combat. The idea is absurd, because the definition's in the word. You're not going to do damage, cause crits, etc no matter how seductively you undress.

But can you can certainly influence the path of the encounter. If somebody wanted to "scream in the enemy's face", sure I'd let them roll Coercion and spread a couple boost dice around. Big deal. They'd have been better off taking a shot with their holdout pistol and Aiming twice, but it adds flavour. Maybe on a Triumph the enemy would have to make a Fear check (unless they already passed one). So you can certainly be creative with it.

However, I wouldn't necessarily encourage that kind of thing on a regular basis. What I would do instead is make a point of having things the non-coms could do in each encounter (rig some cover, find a way out of the cul-de-sac, jam transmissions) that let the non-coms bring their talents to bear in a more interesting way. Why scream in someone's face when you could take a couple rounds and make a laser-net out of empty cans, a bottle of whiskey, and a power pack?

Also, even the socially-oriented sourcebooks make a point of noting that social skills have limited use. Even if you have the Talent, you can't use Scathing Tirade indefinitely ... at some point the insults are ignored, or worse, the Stormtrooper commander yells "Target everything you've got at the clown!" And those guidelines are for people with the actual Talents, not some Talent-less schmo who thinks he's funny.

Obviously YMMV, but the TLDR here is that if you let your non-coms get away with too much early on, you'll have a hard time justifying what they can do later.

I feel like there may just be a fundamental disagreement, but for discussions sake I'll say that what I'm asking about works entirely within the rules. Players use their action to make a skill check, which does "something" to change the situation and in turn adds Boost or Setback dice for the short term (maybe the next turn, next attack, whatever fits). Just like anything else that modified the game situation.

Not a lot of talents actually play around with that design space. The two you mention relate to Strain, not dice. Speaks Binary does similar but doesn't require a roll, and, for instance, Command, allows for a long-term application of the kind of thing I'm talking about. If the player wanted to do something similar, I'd up the difficulty (or probably just add setback dice) and it would only last a turn at best.

With regards to plausability, it all has to make sense in context, with difficulty or setback increases on the check when it doesn't. Trying to rattle hardened Death Troopers would have a higher difficulty than scaring off Petty thugs. And while I keep going back to social stuff, it's equally workable with other skills.

This probably wouldn't be a workable use of actions in a game with PCs built for combat effectiveness where not dealing max possible damage each turn could lead to PC death, but it could easily end up passing a ~15- 20% (1 or 2 boost from succeeding on the check, 1 or 2 boost from the two Advantage spends, with each boost increasing a D2 check success chance by ~7%) increase to hit chance plus maybe extra advantage. That's gotta be worth it for the less combat focused PCs.

3 hours ago, 2P51 said:

Clearly I don't agree with you all. I see no point in having separate skills in all of your examples, frankly all one would need is 5 ranks in Breathing, and then be able to spin up relevance regardless of the situation.

I feel like, certainly in Edge of the Empire, characters are incentivised to not be combat specialists. If you’re not a bounty hunter or hired gun, you probably don’t have combat skills. That’s telling.

And Star Wars is full of examples of non-combat characters influencing combat. Look at R2. He’s always opening doors, throwing up smoke screens, etc.

I’m also a staunch believer that combat is a last resort in Star Wars. The empire always has more stormtroopers, so you better have a better plan than “stand and fight”. A nebulon-B frigate has 70 troopers at its disposal, and I will make you fight them all if you decide to make a stand rather than run.

5 minutes ago, abookfulblockhead said:

I feel like, certainly in Edge of the Empire, characters are incentivised to not be combat specialists. If you’re not a bounty hunter or hired gun, you probably don’t have combat skills. That’s telling.

And Star Wars is full of examples of non-combat characters influencing combat. Look at R2. He’s always opening doors, throwing up smoke screens, etc.

I’m also a staunch believer that combat is a last resort in Star Wars. The empire always has more stormtroopers, so you better have a better plan than “stand and fight”. A nebulon-B frigate has 70 troopers at its disposal, and I will make you fight them all if you decide to make a stand rather than run.

Any combat encounters I run tend to be of the "last resort type", and even then I try to keep combat dynamic and interesting by making the goal of all sides be something other than complete destruction of the opposing side. I find that those encounters give combat-spec characters time to shine, but also give non-combat-spec characters plenty to do and contribute.

56 minutes ago, swammeyjoe said:

I feel like there may just be a fundamental disagreement

I don't think the flagpoles here are really that far apart, just people emphasizing slightly different things, and trying to make their molehills seem more mountainous. The upshot is, sure, you can do what you described. The mechanics support this, so go for it.

I would just be wary of players who try to shove their special abilities into every situation, try to turn their one-trick-pony into a one-size-fits-all-pony. I encourage players branching their PCs out so they become more well-rounded to meet a variety of challenges. If I set up a wilderness adventure where Survival and Resilience are the default tests, they aren't going to Charm their way across the landscape, and their social skills are going to be of limited use ... until they meet the locals. Meanwhile, it will be worth their time to invest in some Resilience so they aren't a burden to the rest of the party. The same general principle should be applied to combat.

You also must consider, what is the point of your game. Is it to win at all costs, or tell and awesome story with memorable encounters that you will be telling your friends about for years to come.

The golden rule. This is a "yes, and...." system.

PCs can, and should be encourged, to do anything they want in this system, as long as they can justify the logic of the action to the GM. As to doing something that is covered by a talent they do not possess, I completely agree with what others have said. Let them do it, AND Ensure that their check is harder than what it would be if they had the talent. and also INFORM them that the talent exists and where they can get it. IF they start to abuse this, just incrementally increase the difficulty until it becomes unfeasable unless they buy the talent. but also record their successes in performing said action, so that if they do eventually purchase the talent (and specilalisation), you can reward them with a discount in purchasing the talent as they have already dipped their toe into its use.

This is actually a topic I plan to bring up to my players in my games soon, as a few of them have non-combat focused characters (not completely inept mind you, just not specced for it). I guess my rule of thumb for this would be "Did the action taken influence the fight in any particular way, or had the opportunity to place a character at an advantage, or a foe at a disadvantage" If the answer to the question is no to all 3, then no they can't spend it on blue dice (or black dice for the last one).

Making the expenditure of advantages into narrative points makes the game more fun. Litterally just saying "I pick my nose, and get 8 advantages, I'm going to pass 8 blue" is kind of metagaming the system. I know that is a bit of an extreme example, so a more concrete one would be "I want to slice the computer and download files" while a combat is going on. The advantages from the slicer should not necessarily be expendable on combatants fighting near by, even though by RAW this is allowed. Now lets say the slicer turns on the automated defense turrets to fire randomly, creating chaos on the battlefield. I'd let them pass blue dice/black dice to affect combatants then.

Not the best example, but I guess I'm saying that RAW enables "nothing-burger" actions to affect combat outcomes. A GM is within their right to put into place a rule like "Passing Blue / assigning black dice must flow from the action that generated them, meaning that the generating action must have had an opportunity to affect the targets affected and their actions."

Now the other scenario that I'm getting from the OP is that I've had some players try to ask for ARBITRARY checks in order to generate adv/triumph. ARBITRARY checks you have a right to deny as a GM. An example of an arbitrary check would be "Hey GM, can I get an athletics check to move this box from point a to point b?" And then asking to spend adv on passing blue. If you feel an action is so simple it does not require any particular roll, or if you feel (your GM sense is tingling ) that this is a "nothing" roll just to generate adv/triumph, ask the PC "Why does your character want to move the box, and why does your character think this is a good idea in the middle of a firefight with the half dozen stormtroopers?" If they can't articulate a good enough reason why their character is focused on this task and how it relates to the combat, you are under no obligation to allow the check. Tell them they move the box, and that's their turn.

Anyway, I think it's good idea to exercise restraint when going against the RAW, but if someone is abusing RAW explicitly, do not be afraid to require justifications.

Thoughts?

On ‎5‎/‎3‎/‎2018 at 10:04 AM, Yaccarus said:

In general, spending your action on any of that isn’t a good idea, since that’s a round where you can’t attack.

If you do use your action on something else, that sort of thing is generally either mandatory (GM forces you to make a fear check for example) or handled by talents (Distracting Behavior, for example).

Yeah I try to overcome that by allowing for non-combat actions to yield some tactical advantage if at all possible. The I-attack/You-attack cadence makes me very bored, so I like to have stuff going on besides the exchange of gunfire and blades. I think that characters can do things to cause enemies to take Strain, lure them into a trap/ambush, or distract them. I really don't like the D&D expectation that we are now in combat, so every time that happens the interesting stuff has to make way for mechanical combat resolution.

7 hours ago, TrystramK said:

This is actually a topic I plan to bring up to my players in my games soon, as a few of them have non-combat focused characters (not completely inept mind you, just not specced for it). I guess my rule of thumb for this would be "Did the action taken influence the fight in any particular way, or had the opportunity to place a character at an advantage, or a foe at a disadvantage" If the answer to the question is no to all 3, then no they can't spend it on blue dice (or black dice for the last one).

Making the expenditure of advantages into narrative points makes the game more fun. Litterally just saying "I pick my nose, and get 8 advantages, I'm going to pass 8 blue" is kind of metagaming the system. I know that is a bit of an extreme example, so a more concrete one would be "I want to slice the computer and download files" while a combat is going on. The advantages from the slicer should not necessarily be expendable on combatants fighting near by, even though by RAW this is allowed. Now lets say the slicer turns on the automated defense turrets to fire randomly, creating chaos on the battlefield. I'd let them pass blue dice/black dice to affect combatants then.

Not the best example, but I guess I'm saying that RAW enables "nothing-burger" actions to affect combat outcomes. A GM is within their right to put into place a rule like "Passing Blue / assigning black dice must flow from the action that generated them, meaning that the generating action must have had an opportunity to affect the targets affected and their actions."

Now the other scenario that I'm getting from the OP is that I've had some players try to ask for ARBITRARY checks in order to generate adv/triumph. ARBITRARY checks you have a right to deny as a GM. An example of an arbitrary check would be "Hey GM, can I get an athletics check to move this box from point a to point b?" And then asking to spend adv on passing blue. If you feel an action is so simple it does not require any particular roll, or if you feel (your GM sense is tingling ) that this is a "nothing" roll just to generate adv/triumph, ask the PC "Why does your character want to move the box, and why does your character think this is a good idea in the middle of a firefight with the half dozen stormtroopers?" If they can't articulate a good enough reason why their character is focused on this task and how it relates to the combat, you are under no obligation to allow the check. Tell them they move the box, and that's their turn.

Anyway, I think it's good idea to exercise restraint when going against the RAW, but if someone is abusing RAW explicitly, do not be afraid to require justifications.

Thoughts?

Masterpiece post. I think the cost for Boost dice needs to be description or explanation at least. I get hurried sometimes or impatient and forget to do this or insist on it, but I think the game tends to be better when the mechanics and the narration can tie-in to good effect.

ARBITRARY checks you have a right to deny as a GM - Amen to that. I have also seen some GMs use arbitrary checks as a way of inflicting Strain on players for things that probably didn't even need a roll, so I have seen it used both ways.

29 minutes ago, Archlyte said:

ARBITRARY checks you have a right to deny as a GM - Amen to that. I have also seen some GMs use arbitrary checks as a way of infli   cting Strain on players for things that probably didn't even  need a roll, so I have seen it used both ways. 

If the GM is calling for a check, you have every right to ask them for an explanation. They should give some kind of justification out of hat, but sometimes they forget. A malicious GM is typically not one that has good players for very long.

3 minutes ago, TrystramK said:

If the GM is calling for a check, you have every right to ask them for an explanation. They should give some kind of justification out of hat, but sometimes they forget. A malicious GM is typically not one that has good players for very long.

To be fair, the guy wo did that seemed to not realize that he was bleeding us dry on Strain as a byproduct of calling for too many dice rolls, but I totally agree that if it was being done as abuse that would suck. On the other hand the idea of the Strain mechanic is so brilliant because it does allow you to model for stress. If stressful situations are happening and that is a factor in the check, then I think that works. Trying to fix the hyperdrive in the middle of an asteroid field is a good time for the character to be stressed.

1 minute ago, Archlyte said:

To be fair, the guy wo did that seemed to not realize that he was bleeding us dry on Strain as a byproduct of calling for too many dice rolls, but I totally agree that if it was being done as abuse that would suck. On the other hand the idea of the Strain mechanic is so brilliant because it does allow you to model for s  tress. If stressful situations are happening and that is a factor in the check, then I think that works. Trying to fix the hyperdrive in the middle of an asteroid field is a good time for the  character to be stressed.

Well yes, I agree. I thought you were talking about a malicious GM calling for arbitrary checks just so they could generate negative effects (which is kind of silly since if the GM wants to make something happen in the environment, they can just do it ). The whole using threat to inflict strain is exactly what you are describing.