So, how do ya'll handle the effects of Ion weapons on character equipment . Temporary damage? Permanent damage? No effect at all?

Background: our heroes were conducted an opposed boarding action to capture / kill a patron that had double crossed them. Security droids were a large portion of the other ship's security detail.

Fortunately, our heroes had previously purchased some ion grenades. But then one character got the crazy notion of: " Hey, ion doesn't affect biologicals, but it DOES affect droids. So, I am going to take out a grenade, run at that droid, and embrace it while the ion grenade goes off. " Essentially, he made himself a suicide bomber - except with an ion grenade. I said " what the ****, rule of cool " and allowed an Athletics check to make this happen - and of course it did.

THEN I wondered: this PC has a bunch of gear that has electronic components. Blaster pistol, macrobinos, a scanner.... wouldn't the ion blast effect THOSE items too? Especially if it went off INCHES from them?

What are your thoughts to handle this? I can almost see my PCs deciding to throw ion grenades as non-lethal weapons that would disable foes' guns without harming or stunning them...

-- GM Khyrith

15 minutes ago, Khyrith said:

So, how do ya'll handle the effects of Ion weapons on character equipment . Temporary damage? Permanent damage? No effect at all?

Background: our heroes were conducted an opposed boarding action to capture / kill a patron that had double crossed them. Security droids were a large portion of the other ship's security detail.

Fortunately, our heroes had previously purchased some ion grenades. But then one character got the crazy notion of: " Hey, ion doesn't affect biologicals, but it DOES affect droids. So, I am going to take out a grenade, run at that droid, and embrace it while the ion grenade goes off. " Essentially, he made himself a suicide bomber - except with an ion grenade. I said " what the ****, rule of cool " and allowed an Athletics check to make this happen - and of course it did.

THEN I wondered: this PC has a bunch of gear that has electronic components. Blaster pistol, macrobinos, a scanner.... wouldn't the ion blast effect THOSE items too? Especially if it went off INCHES from them?

What are your thoughts to handle this? I can almost see my PCs deciding to throw ion grenades as non-lethal weapons that would disable foes' guns without harming or stunning them...

-- GM Khyrith

I don't know about the other pieces of equipment, but the macrobinoculars aren't electronic. They're standard binoculars, with only a few basic features, all of which can be done through mechanical means rather than electronic. It's the Electrobinoculars which have the computerized image enhancement, range finding, digital zoom, thermal scanning, etc. So, No, Macrobinoculars would definitely not be affected.

In the case of a character intentionally detonating the grenade on his person, I would use threats and despairs to affect his electronic equipment. This also seems like a good time to spend a destiny point to upgrade the difficulty of the check.

As for using Ion weapons to target opponents' equipment, I would allow it with a called shot (adding two Setback dice to the roll). Additionally, a standard use of three advantage (EotE Core, page 206) is disarming an opponent or disabling a piece of their equipment.

56 minutes ago, Khyrith said:

So, how do ya'll handle the effects of Ion weapons on character equipment . Temporary damage? Permanent damage? No effect at all?

Background: our heroes were conducted an opposed boarding action to capture / kill a patron that had double crossed them. Security droids were a large portion of the other ship's security detail.

Fortunately, our heroes had previously purchased some ion grenades. But then one character got the crazy notion of: " Hey, ion doesn't affect biologicals, but it DOES affect droids. So, I am going to take out a grenade, run at that droid, and embrace it while the ion grenade goes off. " Essentially, he made himself a suicide bomber - except with an ion grenade. I said " what the ****, rule of cool " and allowed an Athletics check to make this happen - and of course it did.

THEN I wondered: this PC has a bunch of gear that has electronic components. Blaster pistol, macrobinos, a scanner.... wouldn't the ion blast effect THOSE items too? Especially if it went off INCHES from them?

What are your thoughts to handle this? I can almost see my PCs deciding to throw ion grenades as non-lethal weapons that would disable foes' guns without harming or stunning them...

-- GM Khyrith

I wouldn't do permanent damage. If you wanna impose a cost, but keep it easy within a given an encounter, tell them they need to burn an Action to 'reboot' the given piece of effected equipment. Makes it still a viable tactic, imposes a cost within the encounter, and keeps it from being too bookkeepey.

2 hours ago, Khyrith said:

So, how do ya'll handle the effects of Ion weapons on character equipment . Temporary damage  ? Permanent damage? No effect at all  ?  

Skipping the pseudoscience, unless they have something especially sensitive on them like cybernetics, or a rare mcguffin-type item, I'd probably ignore it or use it with any threat/despair results.

1 hour ago, Ghostofman said:

Skipping the pseudoscience, unless they have something especially sensitive on them like cybernetics, or a rare mcguffin-type item, I'd probably ignore it or use it with any threat/despair results.

I'd agree with this: Ion weapons are ridiculously powerful against cybernetics (cybernetic respirators and cybernetic legs both seem like horrible options in a universe with ion weapons) and expanding this to all electronic equipment will basically shut down opponents for a while (no blasters, comlinks, jetpacks, etc.).

My personal theory on why Vader rushed Leia back to the Death Star so quickly after capturing her was he was terrified of running into a Jawa or two on Tattoine: His naked torso might have been found on blocks in a canyon somewhere...