New to the system havent run a game yet just going through the rules. But it says that most vehicle weapons operate on the planetary scale meaning u times there dmg by 10 if u have them fire at pc/npcs in the personal scale. Does this apply to all vehicle weapons including those found on something like a speeder bike or no? If not is there a way to tell if a vehicle weapon is meant for the planetary scale or the personal scale? perhaps in the weapons description in the vehicle stats?

8 minutes ago, lunitic501 said:

New to the system havent run a game yet just going through the rules. But it says that most vehicle weapons operate on the planetary scale meaning u times there dmg by 10 if u have them fire at pc/npcs in the personal scale. Does this apply to all vehicle weapons including those found on something like a speeder bike or no? If not is there a way to tell if a vehicle weapon is meant for the planetary scale or the personal scale? perhaps in the weapons description in the vehicle stats?

It will tell you if a vehicle weapon is personal scale, but you can largely just use common sense.

If a speeder bike has a weapon that deals 11 damage, you can know that it isn't on par with a turbolaser, while if an ISD has a profile for an octuple barbette turbolaser battery, you can be pretty sure that it isn't doing 11 personal scale damage.

Sometime things get screwed up, like the AT-AP having its main weapon listed as personal scale, but even with that you can just use common sense to tell that that was a mistake.

1 hour ago, lunitic501 said:

New to the system havent run a game yet just going through the rules. But it says that most vehicle weapons operate on the planetary scale meaning u times there dmg by 10 if u have them fire at pc/npcs in the personal scale. Does this apply to all vehicle weapons including those found on something like a speeder bike or no? If not is there a way to tell if a vehicle weapon is meant for the planetary scale or the personal scale? perhaps in the weapons description in the vehicle stats?

Most vehicles that include weapons that operate at personal scale (such as the A-47 Speeder Bike) will list in the weapon's text that the damage operates at personal scale, and thus doesn't get the x10 multiplier to damage when targeting a character-scale target.

As a general rule of thumb, I've found that if a vehicle can operate in the atmosphere and the weapon has a damage value of 8 or higher, odds are pretty good the weapon in question is meant to deal character scale damage (i.e. don't multiply by 10 when targeting non-vehicle targets).

Does anybody feel like the +10 damage planetary and more importantly the damage divided by ten against vehicles is to much?

5 hours ago, Sith Interceptor said:

Does anybody feel like the +10 damage planetary and more importantly the damage divided by ten against vehicles is to much?

A common house rule is to use a factor of 5.

4 hours ago, Vader is Love said:

A common house rule is to use a factor of 5.

The factor of 5 rule has significant issues though, particularly when you compare it to the offensive capabilities of personal ordnance against smaller vehicles, and Breach on personal weapons against high-soak targets. When the designers but Breach on a personal weapon, they are expecting it to penetrate everyone's soak, with exceptions Cortosis and dedicated Tank builds. If you change the factor to 5, then it is possible to have starting builds that can still soak a point of damage and only get better as the game goes on.

15 hours ago, Sith Interceptor said:

Does anybody feel like the +10 damage planetary and more importantly the damage divided by ten against vehicles is to much?

It's a quick and easy rule, but it's also a terrible one.

The films, cartoons, and the Mandalorian show that personal weapons can hurt some vehicles, even ones the game gives armor 2 or 3. That's really not a possibility in the game barring some weird min-max loophole-exploiting examples.

40 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

The films, cartoons, and the Mandalorian show that personal weapons can hurt some vehicles, even ones the game gives armor 2 or 3. That's really not a possibility in the game barring some weird min-max loophole-exploiting examples.

Can you give some examples?

(I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just looking for a little bit more information)

6 hours ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

The factor of 5 rule has significant issues though, particularly when you compare it to the offensive capabilities of personal ordnance against smaller vehicles, and Breach on personal weapons against high-soak targets. When the designers but Breach on a personal weapon, they are expecting it to penetrate everyone's soak, with exceptions Cortosis and dedicated Tank builds. If you change the factor to 5, then it is possible to have starting builds that can still soak a point of damage and only get better as the game goes on.

Changing the damage factor from 10 to 5 doesn't mean you must also change the Breach factor. You could always rule that the Breach talent is not affected by the 5 factor. As in, it still goes through 1 point of Armor or 10 points of Soak per level of Breach. Or simply house rule that Breach 1 is Pierce 10 when used on the personal level?

3 minutes ago, Sturn said:

Changing the damage factor from 10 to 5 doesn't mean you must also change the Breach factor. You could always rule that the Breach talent is not affected by the 5 factor. As in, it still goes through 1 point of Armor or 10 points of Soak per level of Breach. Or simply house rule that Breach 1 is Pierce 10 when used on the personal level?

That is logically inconsistent, but okay. If something can ignore 10 points of Soak, it can, by definition, ignore 2 points of armor, since 5 personal scale damage equals point of armor.

1 minute ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

That is logically inconsistent, but okay. If something can ignore 10 points of Soak, it can, by definition, ignore 2 points of armor, since 5 personal scale damage equals point of armor.

Just offering a bandaid for the 5 factor if the Breach change is causing a problem.

15 minutes ago, Sturn said:

Just offering a bandaid for the 5 factor if the Breach change is causing a problem.

I didn't mean it to come across aggressively (if it did), I was just pointing out the issues with it. It's an okay band-aid, it's just not internally consistent.

6 hours ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

Can you give some examples?

(I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just looking for a little bit more information)

Stormtroopers blow up Poe's X-wing in TFA with blaster rifles/carbines.

Jannah blows up a TIE fighter with an energy bow in TROS.

Chirrut blows up a TIE fighter with a lightbow bowcaster in Rogue One.

Mando blows up a TIE fighter with some small explosives in episode 8 of The Mandalorian.

Just now, HappyDaze said:

Mando blows up a TIE fighter with some small explosives in episode 8 of The Mandalorian.

That last one can be explained by Proton Grenades and a GM saying that it makes sense for them to cause the TIE to lose control. (2 Proton Grenades deal 30 damage, or 1 HT past Armor)

Good point with the rest, though that I would imagine has more to do with something being "narratively appropriate" than being able to directly translate it into game terms.

The clearest example I can think of is the Stormtroopers shooting Poe's X-Wing. With a blaster that does 10 damage (counting 1 Success), they wouldn't be able to penetrate the armor on the X-Wing even with the factor of 5 rule. Best way to explain it game-wise (aside from narrative) is that the GM allowed them to use Called Shot to temporarily disable the X-Wing.

As for Chirrut taking down the TIE, best I can say is Breach and a crit, which isn't unreasonable.

I can't remember the other example very well, but I doubt I could come up with an excuse for it.

Has anyone thought of something better than x5 for this.

What about this rule.

A Critical Hit delivered by a Planetary Scale Starship Weapons does +50 Critical Injury.

Do you use it? Does it result in character deaths and how often?

10 hours ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

As for Chirrut taking down the TIE, best I can say is Breach and a crit, which isn't unreasonable.

lightbows don't have Breach

blast 4, knckdown,pierce 3 and 11 damage, which makes them potent anti-personal weapons, but nowhere near powerful enough to oneshot a Tie, even with mods

8 hours ago, Sith Interceptor said:

A Critical Hit delivered by a Planetary Scale Starship Weapons does +50 Critical Injury.

Do you use it? Does it result in character deaths and how often?

I believe that was mentioned in the books.

I don't, actually. What I do is add the remaining personal-scale damage after doubling their WT.

I.e. character with 4 soak and a WT of 12 gets hit by a Heavy Turbolaser (plenty of Breach) with 1 Success (120 damage). Subtract 24 from 120 and you get 96, so i add 96 to the roll.

Whereas with an Autocannon in the same situation, same roll (40 damage): 40-4=36 36-24=12 so you add 12 to the result.

The thing is, I don't use Planetary-scale weapons against my PCs very often (especially the heavier stuff), so I don't have a lot of data to share with you.

13 hours ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

That last one can be explained by Proton Grenades and a GM saying that it makes sense for them to cause the TIE to lose control. (2 Proton Grenades deal 30 damage, or 1 HT past Armor)

Good point with the rest, though that I would imagine has more to do with something being "narratively appropriate" than being able to directly translate it into game terms.

The clearest example I can think of is the Stormtroopers shooting Poe's X-Wing. With a blaster that does 10 damage (counting 1 Success), they wouldn't be able to penetrate the armor on the X-Wing even with the factor of 5 rule. Best way to explain it game-wise (aside from narrative) is that the GM allowed them to use Called Shot to temporarily disable the X-Wing.

As for Chirrut taking down the TIE, best I can say is Breach and a crit, which isn't unreasonable.

I can't remember the other example very well, but I doubt I could come up with an excuse for it.

Even the cases where you allow that it 'makes sense' you make it a GM's call thing that turns the game into a "mother may I" where the players have to game the GM instead of gaming the mechanics. IF the GM plays it RAW then none of those examples can happen in the RPG and that is why it's a problem: because the source materials do show examples of personal/planetary scale interactions, and they don't hold to what the rules of the game allow.

6 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

Even the cases where you allow that it 'makes sense' you make it a GM's call thing that turns the game into a "mother may I" where the players have to game the GM instead of gaming the mechanics. IF the GM plays it RAW then none of those examples can happen in the RPG and that is why it's a problem: because the source materials do show examples of personal/planetary scale interactions, and they don't hold to what the rules of the game allow.

RAW, a Baradium charge planted inside the cockpit of a TIE fighter wouldn't even do enough damage to ground it. And how would you destroy an AT-AT by planting explosives in the neck and exploding the head off?

Sometimes things don't have mechanical explanations and have just a little bit of GM "that makes sense" attached to them. (Mostly with explosives)

Some things can't really have game mechanics and have to be handled narratively.

In the case of the Mandalorian, let's look at it as an RPG session:

GM: Okay, Pedro. Din's turn.
Pedro: I'll accelerate to speed 1 so that I can catch up to the Moff's TIE fighter.
Pedro (IC): Din steps forward to the front of the boat and primes his jetpack, steadying himself uncertainly, he knows what he has to do. The jetpack nozzles flare as he prepares to leap into action.
GM: Okay, and the NPCs stand there looking useless. Alright, Moff Gideon's turn: Maneuver: Move, Action: Strafe [rolls dice] HOW IS A CHARACTER WITH 3 AGILITY AND 3 GUNNERY MISSING ALL THESE SHOTS! ahem. Pedro, Din is up.
Pedro: Maneuver: Move to catch up with his TIE. If GM will allow, I'd like to use my whipcord thrower to try to catch onto the TIE.
GM: Okay, you'll need the two advantage to trigger once you hit.
Pedro: Sounds good! [Rolls dice] Ooo! I succeeded with 2 Advantage and a Triumph, so I'll trigger Ensnare, and can I use the Triumph to pull myself up to the cockpit?
GM: Sure!
Pedro (IC): As the Moff's TIE zips towards them, beginning to fire its cannons, Din jets into the air. Timing it perfectly, he manages to shoot out his whipcord and snag the passing TIE. His jetpack keeps his arm from ripping out of its socket as he struggles to hang on. He activates the winch and with a boost from his jetpack, manages to catch up to the TIE fighter, grabbing onto the cockpit.
GM: Moff Gideon's turn. He'll take Evasive Maneuvers and he'll perform an action to try and shake you off. This'll be based off of speed and handling. Since he's going at speed 2 and has handling 3, that makes it Hard upgraded twice versus your Coordination. [Rolls dice] AGAIN! This man has no luck. Your turn again.
Pedro: Can I try to plant Proton Grenades on the wing? If figure that the damage from 3 Proton Grenades might be able to damage the wing strut enough to send the TIE out of control.
GM: Hmmm... Okay. That'll require a Maneuver to get to the wing, a Called Shot, and a Hard Brawl check using your Intellect (combining Brawl with Mechanics), upgraded once from Evasive Maneuvers since it is technically an attack on the TIE.
Pedro: [Rolls dice] Aww... I failed with three Threat.
GM: So good news, it didn't blow you up. Bad news, with the three Threat, you lose a Proton Grenade.
Pedro: Can I still take him out with the other two? They still get past his armor.
GM: Yes, but it'll add a Setback to the check.
Pedro (IC): Din grabs his blaster and shoots the hatch a couple times, but it has no effect. He holsters it and as the TIE rolls again, he falls off the cockpit, but land hard on the wing strut. Grabbing on, he tries to plant one of his charges on the wing, but fighting against the G-forces is too much and he drops the charge out behind him.
GM: The Moff does the same thing again... [rolls dice] AGAIN!? ARE YOU [excuse me, we are having technical difficulties]. Alright, you may attempt it again, but this time it is only Average difficulty since there are only two of them.
Pedro: [Rolls dice] Yes! I got it. I'll take a Maneuver to drop off the back of the TIE.
GM: Okay.
Pedro (IC): Din harnesses every last bit of strength he has to slap on the last two charges and then he lets go of the TIE, falling away back toward the earth. The charges detonate and the Moff's TIE spins out of control. Din desperately triggers his jetpack, slowing his fall and landing safely back on the planet, stumbling forward.

16 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

Stormtroopers blow up Poe's X-wing in TFA with blaster rifles/carbines.

Jannah blows up a TIE fighter with an energy bow in TROS.

Chirrut blows up a TIE fighter with a lightbow bowcaster in Rogue One.

Mando blows up a TIE fighter with some small explosives in episode 8 of The Mandalorian.

That was an E-Web they used on Poes X-Wing.

12 hours ago, Sith Interceptor said:

A Critical Hit delivered by a Planetary Scale Starship Weapons does +50 Critical Injury.

Do you use it? Does it result in character deaths and how often?

If you read, the book says the GM CAN apply that +50, not must, so it's only an option and up the the GM.

I limit it to "big stuff." Warheads, turbolasers, ect. That allows me to manage it's effects to only situations where things are probably already high enough stakes that a PC death would be acceptable.

57 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

Some things can't really have game mechanics and have to be handled narratively.

That answer is weak. Rules for explosives exist. Use them. If they don't work and you have to butt-pull rulings all the time, then it just shows this game is mechanically crap.

10 minutes ago, Daeglan said:

That was an E-Web they used on Poes X-Wing.

Which still, per RAW, cannot really hope to hurt a vehicle with Armor 3.

Just now, HappyDaze said:

That answer is weak. Rules for explosives exist. Use them. If they don't work and you have to butt-pull rulings all the time, then it just shows this game is mechanically crap.

Alright. You write balanced rules for explosives that are perfectly balanced AND match what we see in the media.

I mean, sure you'll have to compensate for internal vs. external armor and targeting specific components and the effects that would have on the vehicle, and when to inflict a critical injury vs. when it won't, but I'm sure that won't be very hard.

Just now, Daeglan said:

That was an E-Web they used on Poes X-Wing.

Probably more like a LRB, though he may have been referring to after he and BB-8 departed, when they just finished it off.

In some cases you can work it out.

16 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

Mando blows up a TIE fighter with some small explosives in episode 8 of The Mandalorian.

If those explosives were something like Thermal Detonators, certainly possibly with a good crit result.

In some cases it's more of a stretch.

16 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

Chirrut blows up a TIE fighter with a lightbow bowcaster in Rogue One.

Lightbows have enough damage and Pierce that a hot roll could allows a Crit... apply Crits Kill minions to vehicles they operate and you're good.

In some cases you have to apply narrative solutions.

16 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

Stormtroopers blow up Poe's X-wing in TFA with blaster rifles/carbines.

Well they disabled it as a result of POE rolling a Despair, and blowing it up was kinda a moot point after that as it's not like Poe or BB-8 were going to fly anywhere in it afterward.

Tuskens killing Ezra's A-wing with their whatever rifles on Tatooine would have a similar answer.

But some cases... ???

16 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

Jannah blows up a TIE fighter with an energy bow in TROS.

She's an NPC and it was just a flashy description that didn't impact the story in any meaningful way?