Timeline: after Kylo burns down Luke's Jedi Temple but before TFA.

Our party of heroes has stumbled (quite literally) into the secret base of a Resistance cell on Nar Shadda. The planet has been blockaded by three Star Destroyers.

Being the mercenaries they are, our team has agreed to search for and possibly infiltrate/sabotage a doonium-ore processing plant under control of the First Order.

Lastly, one of the players wants his character to die or be maimed so he can make a new character.

I need ideas to help this flow, or cool twists to throw their way.

The plant is being staffed by slave labour, meaning they can't just blow it up.

The plant's computer has an A.I. component that is sympathetic to the resistance (it was originally programmed to ensure worker safety, and has, over time, taken on something of a "mother hen" personality. However, that part has been isolated and quarantined. If the PCs could slice the computer and reactivate the A.I. it would likely help them)

Regarding the death-wish PC; I would go with the classic trope. If they're going to blow up the plant, have something damage the timers on their explosives (or the spikes they use to overload the reactor control computer) so that the detonation has to be done manually. Have that PC mortally wounded, unlikely to survive long enough to get to a bacta tank, and they can volunteer to detonate the destruct device.

Just a few off the top of my head...

Another classic. Someone has to hold up the closing door/falling wall so everyone can escape. Holding the object up long enough for the last slave to escape leads to exhaustion and the character collapsing with the obstacle. Maybe the last person through is a slave who has some attachment to the team, but he still feels bad enough that he wants to take the dead characters responsibilities (or if its just a maiming, become the maimed character's apprentice for the role the maimed character had on the team).

The only way to blow up the plant is to destabilize the reactor. From the inside!

RIP character.

I am just curious on two fronts.

Why does he want a new character? More for curiousity.

Is there another way to retire? E.g. decides that this job was just too dangerous for him and wants to leave.

Otherwise I feel other people have you covered on this one. I as a person don't believe in artificially setting up a situation where a character "must die", it's just much more interesting when those situations arise naturally.

59 minutes ago, LordBritish said:

Otherwise I feel other people have you covered on this one. I as a person don't believe in artificially setting up a situation where a character "must die", it's just much more interesting when those situations arise naturally.

I've done both in previous games. If a character concept just doesn't work for the player as well as he thought when he created it, it can be a drag to the game and can effect the other players as well. It is rare where it happens but I've had players say their character is leaving to follow other dreams and I've had one situation where the player came asking to have his character killed off. We kept it as much a secret from the other players as possible but when we did kill him off it was potent and turned into a motivational event for the rest of the characters.

MASH did that with the death of Henry Blake and caught the actor's true reaction when they heard. It's not something that should be used often and, honestly, I don't see where it would be a common issue unless you have players that are very fickle with their characters but it can be more impactful than "just leaving the team"

The players arrive at the Doonium processing plant to find the first order is shutting it down. They've got another plant in a more secure location they're moving operations to (serious, is Nar Shadda a safe place for anything?) The players arrive to find the FO is shutting the place down and wrapping up the last batch of processed material to be loaded onto a heavy freighter.

It starts to look like a bit of a dud mission, but then the players get word the freighter will be traveling as part of a larger convoy to protect it from a Resistance ambush. The heart of the convoy is a heavy tanker filled with starship fuel. Unfortunately the tanker is heavily defended and armored, so it'll take more than proton torpedoes to take it down.

If the players were able to highjack the freighter, sneak it into the convoy, and crash it into the tanker when the convoy was forming up, they'd not only severely damage the FO's fuel logistic chain and destroy the load of Doonium, they'd also damage most of the convoy's ships as well. Destroying a star destroyer is great, but putting one into space-dock for months of repairs is the next best thing.

Needless to say, things don't work out perfectly, and in the end someone is going to have to manually pilot the freighter the last few thousand yards.

16 hours ago, StriderZessei said:

Timeline: just before the Battle of Jakku.

Our party of heroes has stumbled (quite literally) into the secret base of a Resistance cell on Nar Shadda. The planet has been blockaded by three Star Destroyers.

Being the mercenaries they are, our team has agreed to search for and possibly infiltrate/sabotage a doonium-ore processing plant under control of the First Order.

Lastly, one of the players wants his character to die or be maimed so he can make a new character.

I need ideas to help this flow, or cool twists to throw their way.

Wasn't the Battle of Jakku in 5 ABY? You say Resistance and First Order, but should those be Rebel and Empire?

21 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

Wasn't the Battle of Jakku in 5 ABY? You say Resistance and First Order, but should those be Rebel and Empire?

He probably means the 8th Battle of Jakku. Ya know, like how under the Treaty of Kasdan any galactic parties engaged in warfare for more than 3 weeks are required to conduct a battle on Hoth.

14 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

Wasn't the Battle of Jakku in 5 ABY? You say Resistance and First Order, but should those be Rebel and Empire?

You're right, got my timeline mixed up. It's after Kylo betrays Luke but before the events of TFA.

16 hours ago, LordBritish said:

I am just curious on two fronts.

Why does he want a new character? More for curiousity.

Is there another way to retire? E.g. decides that this job was just too dangerous for him and wants to leave.

Otherwise I feel other people have you covered on this one. I as a person don't believe in artificially setting up a situation where a character "must die", it's just much more interesting when those situations arise naturally.

He just made the character to suit the party's needs (as this is all our very first RPG), but now he wants to play something closer to heart.

Offer an heroic death to his character, something that everybody around the table will remember and talk about many years after.

22 minutes ago, WolfRider said:

Offer an heroic death to his character, something that everybody around the table will remember and talk about many years after.

Let the player do the work of having a meaningful death for the character. If the GM sets it up, it's not really meaningful, just railroading with consent. As the player just wants a new character and want the old one dead or maimed, I'd suggest just having the old character offed in a quick and meaningless way (e.g., a speeder crash). It helps the galaxy to feel a little more real when important people can die in unimportant ways.

20 minutes ago, WolfRider said:

Offer an heroic death to his character, something that everybody around the table will remember and talk about many years after.

Yup, wait for a Despair to come up. "You tripped and the thermal detonator on your belt exploded you into tiny chunks that went all over your friends. They will be tasting and smelling you for days"

On 11/9/2018 at 12:23 PM, WolfRider said:

Offer an heroic death to his character, something that everybody around the table will remember and talk about many years after.