Is that…legal?: Gungan Electropole + Stun Pulse

By Rithuan, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

Hello everyone, I have a cheesy question: So, the Gungan Electropole has Stun 3 quality. But if I add a Stun Pulse Attachment “The weapon gains the Stun 2 quality”. My questions are the following:

Does this quality add? Is it consider a Stun 5 weapon or a Stun 3 weapon? I say no. I imagine you take the higher rate (3). Stun quality is not described in the rules as Pierce, that Ignores 1 point of Soak for each rank of Pierce.

If you modify the Attachment (3 Item Quality [Stun + 1] Mods.) Does this apply to the Stun 3 quality of the weapon or the Stun 2 of the attachment?

Thank you!

Since neither of them are additive, you'd get one or the other, not both.

By default, if you added the Stun Pulse attachment, you'd be using the Gungan Electropole's Stun 3 quality, as that's the better of the two.

Modifying the attachment would affect the Stun 2 quality, but once you modded it to be Stun 4, then I would say that takes precedent over the electropole's inherent Stun quality.

As I thought. Thanks for the reply!

"Type of Mods:

Item quality mods : These mods add a listed quality to the weapon. Some qualities have values
that can increase; if this is the case, then the mod lists it as "Quality (+ 1)", indicating that it increases
an existing quality if the quality is already present or adds the quality at rating 1 if it's not there."

You can use either the Electropole's Stun 3 or the Stun Pulse's Stun 2, your choice.

I would assume, that everyone would take the better Electropole's Stun 3 (as Donovan says), however, the 3 Item Quality (Stun +1) mods of the attachment

can add to this, for a total of up to Stun 6. The Stun Pulse's basic Stun 2 are "wasted".

At the GM's discretion, if you had Stun 2 and Stun 3 on a weapon, you could potentially activate both of them with sufficient Advantages/Triumphs.

2 hours ago, Rogues Rule said:

"Type of Mods:

Item quality mods : These mods add a listed quality to the weapon. Some qualities have values
that can increase; if this is the case, then the mod lists it as "Quality (+ 1)", indicating that it increases
an existing quality if the quality is already present or adds the quality at rating 1 if it's not there."

You can use either the Electropole's Stun 3 or the Stun Pulse's Stun 2, your choice.

I would assume, that everyone would take the better Electropole's Stun 3 (as Donovan says), however, the 3 Item Quality (Stun +1) mods of the attachment

can add to this, for a total of up to Stun 6. The Stun Pulse's basic Stun 2 are "wasted".

This an interesting take on how the mod affects an existing quality. Thank you!

1 hour ago, HappyDaze said:

At the GM's discretion, if you had Stun 2 and Stun 3 on a weapon, you could potentially activate both of them with sufficient Advantages/Triumphs.

Hey, this also an interesting take of having repeated qualities that don't stack. Thank you.

I just realized how little I knew about Stun Quality. After rereading it again, I realize how useful is. Let's say you successfully hit your target, but the damage didn't pass the target's soak. If you have two advantage, you still managed to inflict strain = stun quality rating. That's really powerful!

3 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

At the GM's discretion, if you had Stun 2 and Stun 3 on a weapon, you could potentially activate both of them with sufficient Advantages/Triumphs.

This is also how I play it. Of course the real catch is that you have to have enough free advantage to trigger all of those effects!

It's also worth noting that the energy bleed on lightsabre construction (endless vigil) actually states that it either offers a stun rating of 2 or increases the stun rating by 2.

Which to me; is a lot less broken then autofire. Actually got to make really good use of it in a training session; generally the group I play with generally is a bit soak obsessed, so for the taking session with another PC I took a training stick (Force Nexus.) Used intuitive improvements to add one hardpoint to it (Artisan tree. Tobin is a craft person by day) and added a max modded stun pulse to it (5 stun a trigger). Add in saber swarm and cue a montage of a PC being trained in the way of the sword, literally being hit multiple times a turn with a cattle prod. That was fun stuff that enabled me to bypass something I wouldn't have broken without a more lethal weapon (a lightsabre) with something a bit more humble and to slightly curb the tendency for full battle armour being taken for a character development moment.

19 hours ago, LordBritish said:

It's also worth noting that the energy bleed on lightsabre construction (endless vigil) actually states that it either offers a stun rating of 2 or increases the stun rating by 2. 

Interesting. I wasn't aware of this sort of the dual purpose. If we apply the same logic to the Stun Pulse, that would be wicked.

I love the non-lethal combat in games. To much Metal Gear, I guess.

46 minutes ago, Rithuan said:

Interesting. I wasn't aware of this sort of the dual purpose. If we apply the same logic to the Stun Pulse, that would be wicked.

I love the non-lethal combat in games. To much Metal Gear, I guess.

Unfortunately, non-lethal options in this game tend to be too strong. It's often much easier to stun opponents and then slit their throats than it is to drop them with lethal attacks. The two offending factors here are that WT tends to be considerably higher than ST and stimpacks.

On 9/20/2018 at 3:42 PM, Rithuan said:

I just realized how little I knew about Stun Quality. After rereading it again, I realize how useful is. Let's say you successfully hit your target, but the damage didn't pass the target's soak. If you have two advantage, you still managed to inflict strain = stun quality rating. That's really powerful!

It would be pretty terrible if it didn't ignore soak. Most of those weapons would never do any strain damage if they didn't ignore it.

5 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

Unfortunately, non-lethal options in this game tend to be too strong. It's often much easier to stun opponents and then slit their throats than it is to drop them with lethal attacks. The two offending factors here are that WT tends to be considerably higher than ST and stimpacks.

Maybe if your group is mostly using pistols and isn't judiciously upgrading them with Mods.

If you have a heavy blaster rifle and a few heavy pistols, all using various mods, killing stuff isn't usually a problem.

GMs can of course give their targets higher strain thresholds or anti-stun gear.

2 minutes ago, BadMotivator said:

Maybe if your group is mostly using pistols and isn't judiciously upgrading them with Mods.

If you have a heavy blaster rifle and a few heavy pistols, all using various mods, killing stuff isn't usually a problem.

GMs can of course give their targets higher strain thresholds or anti-stun gear.

Just about everything that ups a heavy blaster pistol's Damage also applies when it is in Stun Setting. It's still much easier to take them down by targeting Strain.

Note that this really only applies when targeting PCs and Nemesis NPCs. For the former, it's often considerable harder for combat characters to raise ST than it is to boost WT.

Yeah, it might be an artifact of the game designers giving a "counter" for burly combat PCs for the GM to use. And it has the side benefit of not necessarily being lethal for the PCs.

2 minutes ago, BadMotivator said:

Yeah, it might be an artifact of the game designers giving a "counter" for burly combat PCs for the GM to use. And it has the side benefit of not necessarily being lethal for the PCs.

Until the bad guys decide to slit their throats before they wake up. Hey, some gangsters are almost as ruthless as PCs!

And, in this game, it's not like lethal damage is usually lethal at all.

Edited by HappyDaze

Oh yeah, thats gonna go over real well...

13 hours ago, Rithuan said:

Interesting. I wasn't aware of this sort of the dual purpose. If we apply the same logic to the Stun Pulse, that would be wicked.

I love the non-lethal combat in games. To much Metal Gear, I guess.

It depends. The wound system doesn't necessarily mean one is dead if they exceed wound threshold; just that they are incapable for fighting any longer. It also necessarily doesn't mean that someone who exceeds wound threshold is also dead, just again wounded to a state that they can no longer operate in the short term.

12 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

Unfortunately, non-lethal options in this game tend to be too strong. It's often much easier to stun opponents and then slit their throats than it is to drop them with lethal attacks. The two offending factors here are that WT tends to be considerably higher than ST and stimpacks.

Indeed in both cases. I feel stun weapons should be a rarity rather then the exception. I largely fit it because otherwise hitting another person with a training stick would be pointless; people in my group routinely get to 6/8 soak, which is usually more then a brawn 3 on a +1 weapon can accomplish. Wanted some other way of measuring a "lethal" contact. Given I have access to saber swarm and the other had no LS skill up to this point; it was more a case in point; if I shock you; you likely already dead in a more serious setting.

That being said; I just feel it's generally unsporting to go for stain thesholds, on the GM or characters end unless the character doing the hunting is dedicated to it in some form or other. Not just a handy latch on a blaster that removes any concept of danger.

Edited by LordBritish

Perhaps Stun shouldn’t have been a default setting on most basic weapons, but instead a Mod that could be added. Perhaps standard issue for Stormtroopers and law enforcement, but not typically used by civilians.

1 hour ago, BadMotivator said:

Perhaps Stun shouldn’t have been a default setting on most basic weapons, but instead a Mod that could be added. Perhaps standard issue for Stormtroopers and law enforcement, but not typically used by civilians.

How would that make sense in-setting? "We don't want criminals and "good guys with guns" using non-lethal force. Only the state should have the power to shoot without intent to kill."

On 9/21/2018 at 10:52 PM, HappyDaze said:

Unfortunately, non-lethal options in this game tend to be too strong. It's often much easier to stun opponents and then slit their throats than it is to drop them with lethal attacks. The two offending factors here are that WT tends to be considerably higher than ST and stimpacks.

The main thing that potentially works against this is stun weapons working only at close range (for the vast majority, anyway).

2 minutes ago, Darzil said:

The main thing that potentially works against this is stun weapons working only at close range (for the vast majority, anyway).

Short range, which in non-battlefield conflicts, account for the vast majority of gunshots IRL. I doubt that Star Wars is different in this respect.

You can also buy stun-only versions of generic blasters for half the price, and since they have S tun damage rather than Stun setting , their range is not reduced. IIRC. It would reasonably be quite common for these blasters to be the only legally available blasters to civilians on many worlds. Frankly, most law enforcement wouldn't need more than stun blasters.

A thing I liked in Saga Edition is that the stun setting generally occupied one of your precious, precious hard points, so if you wanted to get serious about modding your blasters, the stun setting tended to be the first thing to go (actually, I'm tempted to house rule something like that back in). Also, I think a lot of law enforcement types would have some very pointed questions if the came across some who has actively stripped out the non lethal setting from their weapon, assuming it's not already a terribly illegal modification.

"Your honor, I carry a blaster strictly for self-defense! I'm afraid of muggers!"

"Is that so? The jury will note that defendant has admitted to replacing the stun collimator of his weapon with an overcharged xciter, giving it a rated penetration of two point six centimeters of hardened durasteel and the capability of instantly vaporizing roughly 60% of an average sized humanoid's torso!"

"I'm afraid of very big, very heavily armored muggers!"

Edited by penpenpen
13 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

How would that make sense in-setting? "We don't want criminals and "good guys with guns" using non-lethal force. Only the state should have the power to shoot without intent to kill."

It’s not a legal limitation. It would just be that weapons with the option to switch to stun are rare and/or expensive. Which would make sense, that would be a complex feature to design into a weapon. Something that wouldn’t be a standard feature.

4 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

Short range, which in non-battlefield conflicts, account for the vast majority of gunshots IRL. I doubt that Star Wars is different in this respect.

Well yeah. Though Star Wars ranges are quite short. Long range for a Star Wars blaster is well within what short range would be for a real firearm.

4 hours ago, penpenpen said:

You can also buy stun-only versions of generic blasters for half the price, and since they have S tun damage rather than Stun setting , their range is not reduced.

I read that as them only having the stun option, which would still mean they have only short range.

4 hours ago, Darzil said:

I read that as them only having the stun option, which would still mean they have only short range.

Upon re-reading it, that is also a valid interpretation. Might have to ask the devs to clarify that one.