So, I'm running a game and I'm having some issues with characters who are able to prevent pretty much all damage. This is a high XP game (around 1500 total xp). The characters have all pretty much found their niches and are heavily specced into them. For some characters that means that their defenses are very strong, for others, not so much. I have a character with 13 soak, another with 9 soak, 8 ranks in reflect, and sense that allows him to upgrade the difficulty of incoming attacks twice for two attacks during a round. I don't want to increase the difficulty of the enemies, because I have characters with 6 soak as well who are not as combat oriented and I don't want them dying every encounter. I also don't want to give every enemy they fight pierce as that seems pretty cheap. I feel like this is a game design issue. I considered capping soak and reflect, but I don't really want to cheat them out of the gear and talents that they've earned over the course of the campaign. I proposed the following rule, and got some serious pushback:

Attacks need not deal damage to activate a crit. If an attack hits, but does no damage, the attacker may spend advantage in the amount of 1+ their weapon's critical rating to activate a crit. If they activate a crit, and roll less than 50 on a d-100 there is no crit. If they roll over 50, 50 is subtracted from the crit roll, and all other bonuses (vicious, durable, previous crits) are applied normally.

I think this is fair because it allows them to continue to receive benefits from their talents and gear, but still allows for combat with real danger. It's the idea that no matter how well equipped, and how well trained you are, someone can get in a lucky shot that hits a soft spot in your armor or catches you off guard. It allows the party's healer to actually have something to do. They would be able to use the rule to their advantage on their attack roles, and I think it's cinematic because it allows for characters who normally wouldn't do a ton of damage to get off a "lucky shot" that would seriously hamper their opponent. What do you guys think?

That might makes some sense, but I think that it comes down to the group enjoying the game. If they don't approve of (don't like) the home-brewed rule, then it's probably best not to force it on them. The 'less than 50%' crits are actually pretty pertinent to gameplay and if you're going to do it, then that's a good way of going about it. Perhaps a middle-ground can be trying it for an evening. Then, ask for feedback at the end of the session and then pitch the idea again.

I'm more curious about the 13 soak. How's that build look? Specs, brawn, armor??

Also, what sort of galactic escapades has this group been involved in? Kill Jabba? Face Vader? Win the war? Conquer a planet?

1 hour ago, kmc979 said:

Attacks need not deal damage to activate a crit. If an attack hits, but does no damage, the attacker may spend advantage in the amount of 1+ their weapon's critical rating to activate a crit. If they activate a crit, and roll less than 50 on a d-100 there is no crit. If they roll over 50, 50 is subtracted from the crit roll, and all other bonuses (vicious, durable, previous crits) are applied normally.

If I understand it right, this might be a better way to say that:

Whenever an attack hits the target, the acting character may trigger a crit.
If they do no damage past soak, it costs 1 additional Advantage to trigger a crit. Before applying weapon qualities, talents, or previous critical injuries, subtract 50 from the roll. If it is reduced to 0, there is no crit.

I concur with @DurosSpacer that if the players don't agree, you shouldn't push this on them.

About how much earned XP do your players have? Game design is only so good up to a point. Once you get enough XP, the game does break down if the GM doesn't compensate sufficiently. As for compensating sufficiently, you are in command of who the NPCs target. You could even make it so that all but one character passes through unscathed. If you don't want the lower tier (6 soak is "lower tier" ) PCs getting smoked, just don't target them as much. The more durable characters probably also present the biggest threat, so targeting them is not unreasonable. If you've got some glass cannons, getting smoked a time or two might encourage them to increase their durability.

To Duro spacer. Well, we ran through all of the official content for EotE and then we did Assault on Arda. Then we've been doing a homebrew campaign where they were recruited by the rebellion by ahsoka tano to sew discord between the hutts and the empire to relieve pressure from both on the rebellion. For their first mission there, the empire raided a hutt collection of jedi artifacts, a rival hutt cartel stole the artifacts back which caused the empire to retaliate against the hutts. Another rival kajidic made a deal to steal the artifacts back to turn over to the empire to curry favor, and the players intercepted that shipment and captured the crew. They have also faced an inquisitor that they ended up having to run away from. Right now, they're working on a player backstory line where he's a mandalorian and his wife was kidnapped by a rival clan and sold to the hutts so they are on their way to Jabba to try to negotiate for her return. My plan is to make the price jabba wants for her to be unacceptably high so that they have to raid his palace to get her back.

The 13 soak is a hired gun. he has a brawn of 4, 4 ranks in enduring, a rank of armor master, and armor with a soak of 4.

to P-47 they are between 1,400 and 1,500 total xp. We've been playing this campaign for about 2 years.

I have characters in a similar position. Our Wookiee Marauder, for example. 10 Soak, a weapon that does minimum 20 damage each time she swings due to talents, etc. 1500+ xp due to playing the system since day 1, 2013. But, they're having fun, so I'll just keep throwing more meat at them. (They still run at the thought of a certain iconic breathing coming their way, though.)

Are you sure it's not time to retire the characters?

Have you tried putting them in a position where they cannot benefit from their gear? For instance they have to infiltrate some organization so they have to dress like the locals and these locals do not tend to war heavy armor and tote massive, ostentatious weapons.

Every party had a weekness give them different types of challenges.

Force them to go places where armor is not appropriate and they won't be allowed to go.

Have boobytraps in approprite places.

Put them against large numbers.

Have someone hijack their shop when they are in the middle of noware.

Environmental changes should but be forgotten. How well do they swim with that armor? Climb? Jump between rooftops? How stealthy are they?

Your enemies don't have to be powerful to be dangerous, they can be prepared. Attacking a storm trooper based is dangerous not only because of the actual troopers.

Also give them a handicap story wise. Have them sign to escort a squishy nitwit who the hiring are trying to kidnap because day owns a major shipping company they want to help with their snuggling operations. They have to protect him and he is the target.

I am also a fan of mixing things up. A bad hyperspace jump could have them crashing into a primitive planet... Now a survival game for awhile.

I recently concluded a campaign of about 3 years and the PCs hit about 2000XP and it is hard to challenge characters of this caliber. From signature abilities to just the sheer number of talents and PCs that have a 6 characteristic and 5 skills + Talents and good gear it's difficult to keep it challenging for the players.

The clone wars books have the advice that the opposition should be ratcheted up to meet the PCs abilities and consequently the scope and epicness of the adventures increases.

You can also get creative to challenge them - environmental conditions that require Resilience checks to reduce damage taken (soak and reflect don't help). To opponents with force powers and high soak and reflect etc of their own. There's also a number of good weapons that have Breach and a phalanx (see clone wars books again - a lot of really good stuff in their for high XP games) can wear down Jedi with Reflect to make it challenging.

Make combat a side-note to the real mission: your non-combat focused players have to be really good at something so make those things central to the action and what needs to be accomplished while the fight is raging around them (can also give the combat characters a challenge because their soak/reflect doesn't necessarily apply to their essential team members).

Make combat impossible or not useful for parts of the story where negotiation, persuasion, investigation, etc are the focus.

If the PCs are having fun being unstoppable then go with it - as long as you still enjoy being a GM of such a game. I adjusted my expectations of what a "good" encounter is during my campaign - engaged players, having fun at the table, interesting decisions being made and excitement at adapting to the action are usually more important than close calls and Wounds racking up.

These powerful PCs will have to have attracted the attention of some powerful enemies. Enemies that might be willing to stoop to poison, drugs, lethal radiation, or other indirect methods of retaliation. Going to sleep and waking up naked and strapped to a operating table with an array of nasty devices nearby can even the odds significantly.