Hi Guys! My first game session is probably gonna be on Saturday. I’m the GM because I’m the only person who knows anything about Star Wars. I’m trying to make the pirates for the first encounter and I want to know if their over powered. P.S. all the pc’s will have blaster carbines and one of them will have a frag grenade (they found a few dead stormtroopers in the ship they crashed in). Also, the Swoop bikes are going to be very susceptible to things like critical hits and triumphs (they’ll probably explode)

http://swrpg.viluppo.net/equipment/weapons/

Weequay Pirate- 1 Brawn, 3 Cunning, 1 Willpower, 3 Agility, 1 Intellect, 1 Presence

Wound Threshold- 6 Soak 3

2 Ranged (Light), 1 Ranged (Heavy), Gunnery 1

Weequay Pirate 1- Swoop Bike, DL-1 Target Rifle

Weequay Pirate 2- Swoop Bike, Frag Grenade, Hold-Out Blaster Pistol

Weequay Pirate 3- Swoop Bike, Vibro-Axe

Swoop Bike- Silhouette 2, 0 Defense, 0 Armor, 15 Hull Threshold, 6 Max Speed, 15 Strain Threshold, Forward Mounted Light Blaster Repeater (9 Damage, 3 Critical Hit Rating, Close Range, Pierce 1)

Are the 3 pirates Rivals? How many characters in the group?

They do not look too powerful to me but we are also missing a lot of information to fully respond. Is everyone playing a starting level character?

To give the players a little more "oh crap" feel, try sending in a single Rival/Nemesis level Pirate and two groups of 3-4 minions. When they see 9 swoops coming in on them it can look intimidating but the minions will drop quickly and it gives you the chance to introduce the narrative encounter easier.

A PC fires into one of the minion groups and scores a hit doing 12 damage. That gets reduced to 9 from soak and takes out 1 minion completely (6 wounds) and the extra damage gets passed onto the next minion in the group.

"You hit the lead swoop bike pilot square in the chest and he gets flipped of the bike. The bike swerves directly into the path of the next guy who hits it causing it to explode, he wobbles a little but manages to stay up as he turns to for another run"
If they rolled Triumph, they take out the 2nd driver as well. If they rolled advantages, the second driver could not recover in time and has will have setback dice when making his attack.

They have no aemor and will have 6 abilities at level 1, all others at 0

Ok, so let's clean this up. You're not off base, but there's some minor changes you probably want to make to polish it up and make better use of certain mechanics, and tone a few things down so you don't accidentally KO the players.

7 hours ago, TheSoberPug said:

all  the pc’s will have blaster carbines and one of them will have a frag grenade (they found a few  dead stormtroopers in the ship they crashed  in).

Typically in the system Stormtroopers are equipped with blaster rifles, but if you want to change it to Carbines, you won't be the first. Just remember that shortens the range to Medium, so you'll need to bear that in mind when designing Encounters.

7 hours ago, TheSoberPug said:

Weequay Pirate- 1 Brawn  , 3 Cunning, 1 Willpower, 3 Agility, 1 Intellect, 1 Presence

Wound Threshold- 6 Soak 3 

7 hours ago, TheSoberPug said:

Also  , the Swoop bikes are going to be very susceptible to things  like critical hits    and triumphs (they’ll  probably explode   )    

Ok, here's a place where we can clean things up.

There's a special character type called Minion. These represent low level no-name mooks, and are perfect for what you are trying to do.

Since this sounds like this is not supposed to be an especially hard encounter, you can leave them ungroupped, acting as individuals just like normal characters.

Minions are removed from play on a Crit, which is one thing you want to do anyway.

Minions only get skill ranks when they group, since these guys aren't grouped, you don't have to worry about skills. Don't worry, you don't need huge skill ranks to succeed.

Since these guys are going to be riding around on swoops , 3 Agility is fine and the Ability they'll use most.

8 hours ago, TheSoberPug said:

Weequay  Pirate 1- Swoop Bike, DL-1 Target Rifle



Weequay Pirate 2- Swoop Bike, Frag Grenade, Hold-Out Blaster Pistol



Weequay Pirate 3- Swoop Bike, Vibro-Axe  

Check these. The target rifle and the axe both require two hands to use, meaning you can't use it while mounted on a bike. Better to switch to heavy pistols and such.

8 hours ago, TheSoberPug said:

Swoop  Bike- Silhouette 2, 0 Defense, 0 Armor, 15 Hull Threshold, 6 Max Speed, 15 Strain  Threshold, Forward Mounted  Light Blaster Repeater (9  Damage, 3 Critical Hit Rating, Close Range, Pierce 1)  

Ok, reread the vehicle section. It's weird, and yeah took me 3 tries before it started to click.

15 HT is HUGE for a speeder, especially if the players don't have a vehicle as well. Remember there's a x10 scale adjustment, so the players will probably need 15 hits per swoop to take one down without a Crit.

Next, speed 6 is also stupid high. Speed 3 is probably what you want, though with the players on foot anything Speed 1 or better will act largely the same.

Finally, check the repeating blaster. As a vehicle weapon difficulty is Sil based, so in this case always 2 purple. That enough the pirates could land a few hits. Also with Extreme range (not Close) they can out range the players and stay there. Better to drop the weapons and have the pirates use hand weapons with ranges comparable to what the players have.

@Ghostofman 's post is top-notch. I've got a couple of extra tips.

With Minions, I find grouping them can make them easier to defeat in a lot of circumstances. A single Minion is easily taken out in combat usually, and when hit by high damage weapons and/or highly skilled PCs, sometimes they can take 2-3 Minions out in one hit due to critical hits (adv or triumph) or high levels of damage, which isn't as easily possible if they're not grouped. This is because the damage can't immediately apply to the next Minion. On a single hit, soak is only applied once, so hitting a group of Minions can result in less damage being wasted. Don't be afraid to group Minions, it makes the GM job a bit easier. The flip side is not to have 6 groups of 2 Minions, that's 6 chances for them to attack, as opposed to 2 groups of 6 Minions that attack sparingly but rarely fail. I find the group skill thing works well, but 6 Minions only having one attack opportunity as a group is a big boon to the PCs. That's my take anyway.

As for the speeder bikes, my suggestion would be to fudge the rules a bit and NOT use vehicle scale for damage. If it conflicts later on you explain that these bikes were very ramshackle. If you do use the scale and the 10 multiple effect, maybe find a way to suggest the players target the Minions rather than the bikes themselves.

Thanks a lot!

No discussion of encounter design is complete without mentioning The List - this is a d20radio 7-point guideline for making encounters both interesting and challenging. I have found it invaluable!