So, we had a mini-climax in my campaign on Saturday. It was essentially the players finally removing a fairly important villain. He was designed to be a challenge and had enough followers with him that it should've been a very hard fight with lasting consequences depending on how crits and such went.

And...

The PC who is essentially a tank just stunlocked him with a weapon that had concussive 2 on it. For pretty much the entire fight. Even with Nemesis 2 dice upgrades. Generally the other PCs went before him and passed him any blue dice they got from their own attacks.

Is there a way to prevent this from happening again? Concussive just seems too overpowered. It got bad enough he started keeping the only other threatening NPC stunlocked as well and they just killed everyone else in the fight then came back and took care of those two. It made the entire thing extremely anti-climatic.

Well it depends on the scene and the stats. Could you share your encounter to see the threats. When your main threat is staggered we need to know what could he have done with manuevres and enviroment/story points to get away?

Did he order the minions to disarme the tank? Maybe he should run away?

I would definitely use the Nemesis Extra Activation Rules to give the Nemesis two turns per round. If your party relies on a Concussive 2 weapon all the time, you could further increase the number of turns to three or you give your Nemesis a couple of ranks in the Hard Headed talent (found in Star Wars).

Then he can use one turn/action to shake off the staggered effect with Hard Headed and has still one turn/action to act normally.

Are you in a Fantasy or SciFy setting? Bring your Nemesis back as an Undead or Cyborg/Android and give him one more try 😉

It was an android setting. His minions were a large group of fairly bog standard NPCs using the cards. Mercs and such. There were a large group of minions, one rival, one Nemesis, then the boss Nemesis. It was intended to be a very hard fight. The PCs captured him instead of killing him.

I didn't know about the hard headed talent, or didn't remember it at least. It just seems odd that I'd need to grab a talent out of Star Wars to offset a very powerful weapon quality. It completely derailed this fight.

The tank did get disarmed, but he just used his maneuver to pick the weapon up and attacked again. Which made disarm feel kind of pointless honestly.

Disarm burns a character's free maneuver. If you want to really cripple a character's attacks, you need to Sunder their weapons instead, which makes them progressively worse until they break completely.

I definitely agree about the use of the Nemesis rules and having the NPC get 2 turns per round.

Even with 2 turns per round he was staggered for 2 turns. So he'd basically just miss 4 actions instead of 2.

Sunder is useful but the weapon in used was reinforced which makes it immune to sunder.

Then I wonder which weapons you are using. If your Android setting is similar to the Shadow of the Beanstalk Sourcebook, there the only weapon with concussive is the power gauntlet.

Is this tank using something like this?

It is not a reinforced weapon and there is no attachment to make it a reinforced one. Additionally it is a restricted item, illegal for the players to possess, bulky and hard to hide.

If someone tied to law enforcement sees him, the weapon is gone.

Or did a house rule of your own making bring down an unrestricted, reinforced, concussive 2 weapon on yourself?

35 minutes ago, Riggswolfe said:

Even with 2 turns per round he was staggered for 2 turns. So he'd basically just miss 4 actions instead of 2.

Sunder is useful but the weapon in used was reinforced which makes it immune to sunder.

The staggered effect lasts until the end of the next turn, not round. If a nemesis has two turns per round, according to the Nemesis Extra Activation Rules, the effect of a concussive 2 weapon is over after one round (= two turns). So no, he does not miss 4 actions instead of 2.

As you had two Nemesis NPCs in the encounter, it would have been impossible to stun lock both of them.

13 hours ago, Riggswolfe said:

It was an android setting. His minions were a large group of fairly bog standard NPCs using the cards. Mercs and such. There were a large group of minions, one rival, one Nemesis, then the boss Nemesis. It was intended to be a very hard fight. The PCs captured him instead of killing him.

I didn't know about the hard headed talent, or didn't remember it at least. It just seems odd that I'd need to grab a talent out of Star Wars to offset a very powerful weapon quality. It completely derailed this fight.

The tank did get disarmed, but he just used his maneuver to pick the weapon up and attacked again. Which made disarm feel kind of pointless honestly.

with 4 threats one could disarm the other run with the weapon. When the nemesis is staggered he can still use maneuvers to move away. Anyways point is there is a counter to everything. Dont use it all the time though let player have their moments but as they grow powerfull and get better weapons you must get creative to challenge them

17 minutes ago, Rogues Rule said:

The staggered effect lasts until the end of the next turn, not round. If a nemesis has two turns per round, according to the Nemesis Extra Activation Rules, the effect of a concussive 2 weapon is over after one round (= two turns). So no, he does not miss 4 actions instead of 2.

As you had two Nemesis NPCs in the encounter, it would have been impossible to stun lock both of them.

That would have significantly changed things. I think I also had the staggered effect go off the PC's turns, not the Nemesis. So he was staggered until 2 of the PC's turns had come and gone.

Also consider adopting the squad and squadron rules for your bad guy, he can redirect the hit to a minion attached to him, and keep fighting as normal.

On 9/3/2019 at 9:59 PM, KRKappel said:

Also consider adopting the squad and squadron rules for your bad guy, he can redirect the hit to a minion attached to him, and keep fighting as normal.

Good idea! I had considered mentioning it but the OP seemed to be hesitant to add in things not in the official rules for Genesys when someone mentioned using the Hard Headed talent. Hoping the Squad rules are brought into the player handbook/GM Kit in that case. They are amazing.

These are all solid recommendations. As someone else who suffered with having their BBEG stunlocked by a PC with a Super Sledge (Concussive 2), the next time I have a battle I'm going to have two NPCs of similar threat-level. That will give him the choice of going after the BBEG commander, or tank the enemy beatstick and prevent them from massacring the other PCs.

I don't allow concussive on a nemesis, I just downgrade it to disorient. I just talked it out with my players and they agreed, they honestly thought it felt cheap. Worked for my group!