On 1/16/2019 at 12:09 PM, EliasWindrider said:

this

https://www.mediafire.com/file/bu939rw81sw41zj/ArisRenn3500xp.pdf/file

is close to the best I could do if "she sprang into existance fully form" I am playing Aris Renn as a starting character and started with a 4 in Agility, 2's in willpower, brawn, intellect, 3's in cunning and presence. But for this build to get an extra point of strain and save 10 xp I started with 3's in agility and willpower.

She's bad *** and when Ogg Dude does his next release (any day now) I'll add the kst-100 to it and it will be even more of a beast because of the rigger signature vehicle and associated talents.

I haven't really picked gear for her (she should get a bad *** blaster pistol, might have it custom commissioned by the best crafter in the galaxy or might go for a nova viper (the hutt space book, EotE, I think it's "Lords of Nal Hutta") might get a agility enhancing arm from special modifications (because it can be unobstrusive and ion shielded) to get agility up to 7 and the avionics interface cybernetic implant to add a rank to pilot space and pilot planetary.

If the OP meant 3500 earned xp there's a lot more I could do with an extra 120 xp.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/vie7im4z8qovogn/ArisRenn3500xpWithShipAndGear.pdf/file

I entered the KST-100 into ogg dude's generator (because it wasn't a book Oggy was planning to get in the next release after all) I also added a whole bunch of gear most of which she leaves on the ship, the surveyor's bag is a purse which she normally doesn't use.

1 hour ago, HappyDaze said:

None of that helps because he's not the target of the attack; he's just close enough to get hit by the Blast. The terrain around him probably doesnt have any particular Defense and certainly won't have Dodge or Sense.

This can also be accomplished by putting a minion into Engaged with your guy and dropping the proton torp on that minion to catch your guy with the Blast. Again, those protective measures you've mentioned do nothing to save you.

As a GM I wouldn't allow PCs to kill a nemesis NPC or another PC with blast by targeting the ground near him... if you aren't targeting someone, you don't hit anyone, targeting the ground hits the ground but not close enough to blast the character you intended to kill by not targeting them, and if you try to get it close enough to them you are by definition targeting them. And I can avoid the PCs doing the target the minion trick by not having the minion near the nemesis/PC.

However, assuming that this munchkin tactic (and I distinguish between power gaming and munchinism, power gaming works within the rules, munchinism seeks to circumvent the rules, and that tactic seeks to circumvent the rules) was allowed, knowing what's coming (thanks to foresee) would still allow Elias to not give the assassin the opportunity to take him out with a torpedo targeting the terrain by instead being in a ship such as a highly modified KST-100.

It's not about the target having his own minion close by, it's about targeting one of yours that you've intentionally put adjacent to the target. You sacrifice your pawn to take a queen. I recommend those remotes (dumbed-down droids) for this purpose.

And it's all perfectly legal. There's not even a question there. Sure, as a GM you can disallow anything, but I'm just following the rules. You can call it munchkinism if it makes you feel better, but BOOM goes the minion and the master Force-user!

As for Foreseeing, it's hardly foolproof, as the Emperor discovered.

"Hey guys, let's come up with some awesome 3500 EXP builds!"

In comes HD to **** on everyone's fun and tries to deflect any criticism of it as 'just following the rules'. Alright, how about this for rules then: Time To Go. Spend 1 DP, out of range of any Blast you want to trigger. Woops...

also Elias, that old character was on the way there, but not quite - "only" 850 or so earned EXP meant it was still in the process of being built, especially since I tend to spread out my EXP a lot. So she only had 2 ranged defense with her armor (Jury-Rigged and Improved Armor Master), and I was only in the process of buying into Sense - let's just say the GM had some very... unique... views on spending EXP for Force powers even when he allowed someone to play a force user. I built this character pretty much right after No Disintegrations came out to replace a retired Wookiee mechanic. The eventual plan was to get Armorer, but that turned out to be about as likely as the sun deciding to switch its color to green. I don't quite remember what I settled on in the end for future plans, but Steel Hand Adept wasn't released back then (and not required with the version of Cathar we used, since they had Crit 3 claws to begin with).

28 minutes ago, Silim said:

In comes HD to **** on everyone's fun and tries to deflect any criticism of it as 'just following the rules'. Alright, how about this for rules then: Time To Go. Spend 1 DP, out of range of any Blast you want to trigger. Woops...

Good idea, but there's a flaw to that defense too:

Sabotuer with a Baradium Charge. It only takes a Difficulty 1 Mechanics test to do 3 + successes Planetary Scale Damage to everyone within Long (Personal Scale) range. He walks up to you and detonates. Time to Go won't save you; it only gives a Move maneuver to try to get out of range and you aren't going to get outside of Long with one Move maneuver. None of your Defense or Dodge upgrades matter; it's based on his Mechanics test and auto-hits everything in range if that test succeeds. Even better, with Selective Detonation, he can somehow survive his own suicide bomb if he scores a few Advantages on the roll.

Take that fun!

4 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

Good idea, but there's a flaw to that defense too:

Sabotuer with a Baradium Charge. It only takes a Difficulty 1 Mechanics test to do 3 + successes Planetary Scale Damage to everyone within Long (Personal Scale) range. He walks up to you and detonates. Time to Go won't save you; it only gives a Move maneuver to try to get out of range and you aren't going to get outside of Long with one Move maneuver. None of your Defense or Dodge upgrades matter; it's based on his Mechanics test and auto-hits everything in range if that test succeeds. Even better, with Selective Detonation, he can somehow survive his own suicide bomb if he scores a few Advantages on the roll.

Take that fun!

Ha, not quite! With a Jetpack, the flying suit (the one that uses repulsor technology, forgot its name) or Rocket Boots, you can move at vehicle speed to get far enough away with that one Maneuver!

...However, I think enough of those charges or proton grenades eventually reach the planetary distance scale, sooo... It only works to a certain extent. But! For a single Baradium Charge, a Jetpack + Time To Go is the solution. Fun is still alive!

5 minutes ago, Silim said:

Ha, not quite! With a Jetpack, the flying suit (the one that uses repulsor technology, forgot its name) or Rocket Boots, you can move at vehicle speed to get far enough away with that one Maneuver!

...However, I think enough of those charges or proton grenades eventually reach the planetary distance scale, sooo... It only works to a certain extent. But! For a single Baradium Charge, a Jetpack + Time To Go is the solution. Fun is still alive!

Nope. As you're operating as a vehicle, you would need to take a Fly/Drive maneuver to go anywhere. Time to Go specifically gives you a Move maneuver (it's capitalized in the text because it is a specific maneuver) which is an on-foot personal scale thing, so you'd go nowhere. BOOM!☠️

Just now, HappyDaze said:

Nope. As you're operating as a vehicle, you would need to take a Fly/Drive maneuver to go anywhere. Time to Go specifically gives you a Move maneuver (it's capitalized in the text because it is a specific maneuver) which is an on-foot personal scale thing, so you'd go nowhere. BOOM!☠️

****. So long, space cowboy. You win this time, HD.

9 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

It's not about the target having his own minion close by, it's about targeting one of yours that you've intentionally put adjacent to the target. You sacrifice your pawn to take a queen. I recommend those remotes (dumbed-down droids) for this purpose.

And it's all perfectly legal. There's not even a question there. Sure, as a GM you can disallow anything, but I'm just following the rules. You can call it munchkinism if it makes you feel better, but BOOM goes the minion and the master Force-user!

As for Foreseeing, it's hardly foolproof, as the Emperor discovered.

Targeting the ground near a character close enough to hit them with blast from a torpedo IS by any common sense definition targeting them. Trying target them "without targeting them" to bypass the rules that increase the defense pool is the munchinism I was referring to. And I categorically reject your claim that it is allowed by RAW. But what I would do for such a creative/cunning player is let them treat the target as being silhouette 3 (which would potentially decrease the difficulty of the attack depending on the size of the players starship/vehicle) because they're trying to use blast. If that wasn't good enough for the player I would then eject the self demonstrated munchkin from my gaming table.

Since we're in the F&D forum I'll mention that sending a minion to suicide bomb would be earning conflict, sacrificing a minion droid would earn less conflict than a organic sentient. And I'm not going to let them break RAW by making a minion rival or nemesis NPC sidekick with a PC specialization like saboteur sapper or demolitionist. If they wanted to risk the life of their own character using selective detonation that's something that I would allow. Of course there are going to be red dice in the pool if they're dealing with baradium.

On the topic of time to go, it does work with enhance force leap maneuver so if they detonate within short range it's a viable tactic, otherwise that would allow the target to force leap out of range. If we're talking PC vs. PC assassination attempt, first off if it comes to this there is serious out of game issues that need to be dealt with, however ignoring that, surpassing wound threshold doesn't kill a PC, it renders them unconscious and triggers a critical hit. If they were engaged with the device (+50 to critical hit) it could kill technically them. Otherwise the target PC is just going to be unconscious with a critical hit between 1 and 100. Basically the only PCs that might die from the explosion is the saboteur in your example plus anyone who they are engaged with.

3 hours ago, EliasWindrider said:

On the topic of time to go, it does work with enhance force leap maneuver so if they detonate within short range it's a viable tactic, otherwise that would allow the target to force leap out of range.

Nope. Force Leap is not a Move maneuver. It's a use of a Force power (Enhance) which can initially be done as an Action and later as a Maneuver. Regardless, it is still not the Move maneuver, and the Move maneuver is all Time to Go allows. BOOM you're dead!☠️

OK, not necessarily dead, but out of it and easy enough for any idiot to finish off by simply throttling you until you die by suffocation (or just bashing your head against the ground repeatedly).

As for Conflict, I relish it. Dark side has all the fun! However, sacrificing a minion droid like a remote is not Conflict worthy at all. Those things are barely more capable than the "brains" of smart munitions and are certainly not people.

Also, giving talents to NPCs is perfectly legal within the RAW. So again, BOOM!!!

29 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

Nope. Force Leap is not a Move maneuver. It's a use of a Force power (Enhance) which can initially be done as an Action and later as a Maneuver. Regardless, it is still not the Move maneuver, and the Move maneuver is all Time to Go allows. BOOM you're dead!☠️

OK, not necessarily dead, but out of it and easy enough for any idiot to finish off by simply throttling you until you die by suffocation (or just bashing your head against the ground repeatedly).

As for Conflict, I relish it. Dark side has all the fun! However, sacrificing a minion droid like a remote is not Conflict worthy at all. Those things are barely more capable than the "brains" of smart munitions and are certainly not people.

Also, giving talents to NPCs is perfectly legal within the RAW. So again, BOOM!!!

PCs don't get to give NPCs talents, GMs do. So no, it is not legal for you the player to give talents to the npc (except what's allowed by droid crafting).

And I find your claim that using force leap as a maneuver to move doesn't qualify as a move maneuver to be highly suspect. You're going to have to show me a dev ruling on this specifically or you're out of luck.

Not all minion droids are remotes and having a remote carry an additional payload that rivals or surpasses it's own weight, yeah that's going to take some justification but I would probably allow it, of course you still have to make the mechanics check against multiple red (cause baradium is highly unstable and stuff can go crazy wrong , and then the GM flipping a dp for an extra difficulty upgrade beyond what's justified by baradium... so that would be something like a 3 red check and possibly black depending upon the circumstances) to set the explosives which with a despair or I forget how many threat means boom. Given an explosive with long range... well unfortunatelly for you stuff goes flying so you got a long range area full of black stuff to search for a blackened body before you can cap a passed out character, assuming that you survived the blast without losing consciousness as well.

2 hours ago, EliasWindrider said:

And I find your claim that using force leap as a maneuver to move doesn't qualify as a move maneuver to be highly suspect. You're going to have to show me a dev ruling on this specifically or you're out of luck.

RTFM powergamer. The Move maneuver is a specific maneuver. It is distinct from Fly/Drive and using the Enhance Force Power to leap as a maneuver. You need a dev ruling? Please. I accept your defeat.

2 hours ago, EliasWindrider said:

PCs don't get to give NPCs talents, GMs do. So no, it is not legal for you the player to give talents to the npc (except what's allowed by droid crafting).

Not all minion droids are remotes and having a remote carry an additional payload that rivals or surpasses it's own weight, yeah that's going to take some justification but I would probably allow it, of course you still have to make the mechanics check against multiple red (cause baradium is highly unstable and stuff can go crazy wrong , and then the GM flipping a dp for an extra difficulty upgrade beyond what's justified by baradium... so that would be something like a 3 red check and possibly black depending upon the circumstances) to set the explosives which with a despair or I forget how many threat means boom. Given an explosive with long range... well unfortunatelly for you stuff goes flying so you got a long range area full of black stuff to search for a blackened body before you can cap a passed out character, assuming that you survived the blast without losing consciousness as well.

So are you a GM or a player in this, because all this upgrade crap for baradium is pure butt-pull. As a GM you can butt-pull like this (until your players dethrone you), but as written, there are no upgrades for using a baradium charge. I'm just using the rules...the same ones you love when they give you overpowered crap from crafting.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and BOOM!!! Your Jedi dies in a cloud of baradium dust!☠️☠️☠️

9 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

RTFM powergamer. The Move maneuver is a specific maneuver. It is distinct from Fly/Drive and using the Enhance Force Power to leap as a maneuver. You need a dev ruling? Please. I accept your defeat.

While I may be a power gamer, I'm not a munchkin or rules lawyer (there happens to be a lot of overlap between munchkins and rules lawyers).

Too bad for you that I'm not offering it to you.

The clarification/elaboration in the time to go talent long form is that it can only be used to move into cover or out of blast range, and using force leap as a maneuver meets that criteria. Using a maneuver to move is using a maneuver to move. At least that's the way I read it.

But several hours ago I submitted a request for a dev ruling.

19 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

So are you a GM or a player in this, because all this upgrade crap for baradium is pure butt-pull. As a GM you can butt-pull like this (until your players dethrone you), but as written, there are no upgrades for using a baradium charge. I'm just using the rules...the same ones you love when they give you overpowered crap from crafting.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and BOOM!!! Your Jedi dies in a cloud of baradium dust!☠️☠️☠️

It was unclear to me whether you the PC were trying to kill another PC or a NPC, so I was alternating answers from both perspectives. It is completely within the rules for the GM to upgrade a roll based on the circumstances, the criteria for upgrades is the likelihood of something going wrong (and since baradium is explicitly highly unstable, so that box is checked many times over) and high consequences if something does go wrong (which is also checked in spades). Across all the systems I've GM'd for the last 27 or so years, I have never killed a PC. As a GM my objective is for the players to have a good time by collaborating on telling a good story and for the PCs to usually win. Power gaming is not only allowed at my gaming table but encouraged, I expect them to mow down minions and rivals, but I do not abide munchkins or rules lawyers (in my experience they have a high rate of coincidence).

5 minutes ago, EliasWindrider said:

Across all the systems I've GM'd for the last 27 or so years, I have never killed a PC.

I killed one just last week. In a one-shot (pun unintended, but it fits...) of WEGD6SWR&E, it can be rough to abandon cover when you're out of character points. A 2D+2 Strength vs the 4D+1 damage of a Sporting Blaster Rifle is really nasty when the character rolls a 1 on the Wild die and the shooter gets a 6 on his Wild die. It resulted in instant death for the character. However, the rest of the group successfully completed their mission. So, the good guys won, but at a cost.

Not all games are pillow fights like FFG's system.

1 hour ago, HappyDaze said:

I killed one just last week. In a one-shot (pun unintended, but it fits...) of WEGD6SWR&E, it can be rough to abandon cover when you're out of character points. A 2D+2 Strength vs the 4D+1 damage of a Sporting Blaster Rifle is really nasty when the character rolls a 1 on the Wild die and the shooter gets a 6 on his Wild die. It resulted in instant death for the character. However, the rest of the group successfully completed their mission. So, the good guys won, but at a cost.

Not all games are pillow fights like FFG's system.

My last rodeo with the WEG system was quite a while ago, but I remember everyone getting real sick and tired of the wild die at the end of it. Somehow, we never liked a 1 in 6 chance of a colossal ******... But it does allow for some rather ludicrous disintegrations by accident. Or intentionally, I suppose. Our general consensus became "amazing moments are fleeting, lost body parts and shot out eyes are far more permanent" on the whole thing...

Back on actual topic for the... well, topic. Instead of creating the most "broken" possible, here's a little something for a Mandalorian Armorsmith. Who, like all self-respecting Mandalorians, can of course fight.

Start out as Guardian/Armorer. Easily good for a character who, even at 3500 EXP earned, doesn't realize they use the Force. For the typical Mando training, either Recruit - for the lighter side of it - or Executioner. Then, we need to of course get this Armorsmith to be the best there ever was, like no one before, so Artisan is a nice option, together with cyber-tech if we also want to become a cyborg. I don't have Fully Operational with me right now, but hey - let's add Shipwright for potential future shenanigans! Or maybe some silver-tongued talents for the mercantile side. I'm sure we can nab a few good things from Entrepreneur...

I imagine this sort of character to be far more "plausible" as a NPC, who might've been a traveling merc before. The kinda guy an all Bounty Hunter game goes to to get those creds of their big score turned into amazing-*** gear, since they somehow all have an average Intellect score of 1.2 between them. But of course, no credits in the world buy you Beskar or Cortosis alone, so you better be ready to do a few odd jobs for him as he hammers out your new traditional armor set... Oh woops, seems you accidentally joined a Mandalorian clan now. Not to worry, that should only increase your reputations, not damage them.

Spending 3500 xp on a character is an interesting challenge. I decided for the fun of it to start with a Polis Massan Technician Modder and go from there. without adding any kind of Force abilities I now have a 445334 character with the added Specializations of Cyber Tech, Droid Tech, Droid Specialist, Hotshot, Rigger, Scientist & Shipwright, with 4 of the 8 having every Talent chosen and adding a lot of Skills.

I can see how doing it under F&D would be a good bit different because of the added Force Powers.

I'm intrigued as to how the new jedi specs will change things.

I'd go heavily build into force dice/unleash/protect. Snipe people with lightning.

At that XP level Force-sensitives will dominate since there's no cap to FR.

I decided to optimize for both Force use and autofire attack. Ended up with a Cathar Hunter with FR 13 or 14 (can't remember) who adds all those Force dice to his 7Y ranged:heavy to hit with his light repeating blaster. I give you the Lord of the Hunt:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1IN49Ggz7Vyq1HQxzNJTaDkj6F5JdU1kX

He is a drooling moron with Intellect 1 and the power to massacre entire cities with pure autofire.

If you really want to make a character that won't get killed, take those 3500xp, spend about 50 of them on one of the more mundane specs (scientist, trader etc, but nothing eye catching like entertainer), take your unmodified starting ship to a remote, uninteresting, unimportant planets and trade it for a quiet homestead and blend in with the local minions.

Technically, you can be killed, but there's really no reason for anyone to bother. Should anyone try anyway, stay close to a group of minions and fall down and play dead the moment you are (or even the guy next to you is) hit.

Never spend the remaining 3450 xp. The resulting competence will only draw attention to you.

Never answer the call to adventure. In fact, if you can even hear the call faintly in the distance, pack up and move further away.

...

The epic variant of this maxes out Deception and specializes in convincing the enemy that he's a minion and that glancing blow totally just killed him.

Actually, the most cost-efficient tanking available is probably "Don't shoot!". A hard charm check, regardless of the opposition, and you can't get targeted by combat checks until the end of the encounter. Off the top of my head that only leaves a few force powers, Scathing Tirade (and similar talents) and possibly Blast shenanigans that could actually hurt you.

Of course, you can't make any combat checks yourself, so invest in Bind, Unleash and Scathing Tirade.

Presumably the tankiest actual combat build at this XP is a very high FR, like FR15 or so, plus maxed-out Protect power and Discipline. Preventing 4 damage per lightside pip rolled, plus successes (so probably preventing 50 damage or so from each hit), reflecting all damage that's reduced to zero back on the attacker... no one will dare to attack you. Combine that with maxed out Scathing Tirade, adding those 15 Force dice to each Coercion check, to taunt anyone who doesn't attack you into unconsciousness... that's unbeatable by anything short of a starship weapon.

Edit: Yeah, at FR 15 the most likely roll is 10 light side pips, and the odds of less than 5 lsp (still preventing 20 damage + successes) is only around 3%. You're almost untouchable with that sort of build.

11 hours ago, DaverWattra said:

Presumably the tankiest actual combat build at this XP is a very high FR, like FR15 or so, plus maxed-out Protect power and Discipline. Preventing 4 damage per lightside pip rolled, plus successes (so probably preventing 50 damage or so from each hit), reflecting all damage that's reduced to zero back on the attacker... no one will dare to attack you. Combine that with maxed out Scathing Tirade, adding those 15 Force dice to each Coercion check, to taunt anyone who doesn't attack you into unconsciousness... that's unbeatable by anything short of a starship weapon.

Edit: Yeah, at FR 15 the most likely roll is 10 light side pips, and the odds of less than 5 lsp (still preventing 20 damage + successes) is only around 3%. You're almost untouchable with that sort of build.

That's all well and good until someone throws a non-energy based attack against you, like a vibroblade or a slugthrower. Or beats you over the head with a blaster.
Of course, at the level, Unleash is a pretty good offense, which we all know is the best defense.

Against energy attacks though, Protect would stack with reflect and parry (as they reduce the damage dealt, which to me means reducing it before soak is applied), raising the bar even further on which attack you reduce to 0. Pick up Improved reflect/parry and you can potentially throw back the same attack twice. As you're probably going to spend most of your actions activating force powers rather than combat checks, it might be worth picking up the supreme versions as well, for the reduced strain cost).

Now, if you dip into into Charmer for Don't Shoot (if you don't want to bother with Presence or ranks in Charm, 30 points into Influence lets you apply that massive FR to social checks), you've reduced your vulnerability to just non-combat check attacks, and Blast shenanigans that do not directly combat you, and stuff like Scathing Tirade (and with a FR of 10+ and Influence, you should definitely have Scathing Tirade yourself). Of the Force powers, we can probably surmise that Unleash, at least on the Mastery level (Force lightning) is energy based, so that's covered. Move can't throw stuff at you, as it's a combat check, and throwing you around directly "only" causes 10 damage, plus successes, which should be manageable. Harm could be a little nasty, but still needs to overcome (like any other Force power) your presumably top-tier Discipline, leaving Blast weapon shenanigans, which do have a fairly effective counter in Strategic Form, which makes an enemy capable of targeting only you with combat checks (which he then can't make, because of Don't shoot). That means no targeting the ground, or a minion, next to you for blast damage. Only works on short range though.

Of course, there really isn't any good defense against Scathing Tirade if someone buffs it with Influence and FR up the wazoo. Multiple ranks of Resolve help, but they're pretty spread out and hard to get at. Unless up against a very specialized build, if you max out FR and dip into Influence, you should be able to scold pretty much anyone into a blubbering mess in an action or two.

Well, unless it's a droid.

8 hours ago, penpenpen said:

That's all well and good until someone throws a non-energy based attack against you, like a vibroblade or a slugthrower.

One of the Control upgrades lets it work against non-energy attacks

16 minutes ago, DaverWattra said:

One of the Control upgrades lets it work against non-energy attacks

Well, of course it does. Silly me!

That should let it deal with any force power. Not sure it'd work against Scathing Tirade though.