3 hours ago, whafrog said:

You're kind of making my point.

Quote the opposite. The system is DESIGNED to be lethal. By doubling the wound threshold before people fall unconscious, you are

A) removing the danger of smaller tier minions like basic stormtroopers

B) going against what you're setting out to do (in my opinion) by literally having squishy face characters be able to survive a thermal detonator and still be conscious. 12-14 WT is fairly standard starting amount before any character gets xp to really spend to make them tougher. Double that, 24-28, and when a thermal det goes off, yes, they are hurting, but they shouldn't be conscious . The only time you see people survive stuff with damage but still breathing like that is... well, in video games.

3 hours ago, whafrog said:

Anyway, if you like the mechanic then carry on using it. I'm not sure why you're trying to convince people to use a mechanic they don't like.

It's because of the reasoning behind it that I'm making my case. By doing what you suggest, you throw off the balance of the entire game simply for one little thing that is counter productive. No matter what, its your table, your rules, my table, my rules, but regardless, I'd still like to make my case for any future user that may be on the fence one way or the other about something like this.

26 minutes ago, GameboyAK said:

Quote the opposite. The system is DESIGNED to be lethal. By doubling the wound threshold before people fall unconscious, you are

A) removing the danger of smaller tier minions like basic stormtroopers

B) going against what you're setting out to do (in my opinion) by literally having squishy face characters be able to survive a thermal detonator and still be conscious. 12-14 WT is fairly standard starting amount before any character gets xp to really spend to make them tougher. Double that, 24-28, and when a thermal det goes off, yes, they are hurting, but they shouldn't be conscious . The only time you see people survive stuff with damage but still breathing like that is... well, in video games.

It's because of the reasoning behind it that I'm making my case. By doing what you suggest, you throw off the balance of the entire game simply for one little thing that is counter productive. No matter what, its your table, your rules, my table, my rules, but regardless, I'd still like to make my case for any future user that may be on the fence one way or the other about something like this.

I think lethal is the wrong word. It is easy to knock a pc unconscious. It is hard to kill them.

6 minutes ago, Daeglan said:

I think lethal is the wrong word. It is easy to knock a pc unconscious. It is hard to kill them.

In a way, you're right. But thats more a game mechanic rather than the narrative view that is universe accurate.

Well if by game mechanics your character is alive how does that not be in universe accurate?

38 minutes ago, Daeglan said:

Well if by game mechanics your character is alive how does that not be in universe accurate?

Because an experienced clone arc trooper can be taken down by a single shot with no prior wounds by a blaster pistol. The only way that could mechanically happen is via a ton of triumphs or a high crit roll with several ranks of Lethal Blows.

1 minute ago, GameboyAK said:

Because an experienced clone arc trooper can be taken down by a single shot with no prior wounds by a blaster pistol. The only way that could mechanically happen is via a ton of triumphs or a high crit roll with several ranks of Lethal Blows.

they arent as tough as a PC. that is all.

1 hour ago, GameboyAK said:

going against what you're setting out to do (in my opinion) by literally having squishy face characters be able to survive a thermal detonator and still be conscious. 12-14 WT is fairly standard starting amount before any character gets xp to really spend to make them tougher. Double that, 24-28, and when a thermal det goes off, yes, they are hurting, but they shouldn't be conscious . The only time you see people survive stuff with damage but still breathing like that is... well, in video games.

Sure, but that's the problem with hit point games anyway. In some ways, thermal detonators aren't lethal enough in this game, they shouldn't really do WT, they should impose at least one auto-crit. In any case, using my changes, a thermal detonator is still going to crit them and Disorient them (or worse) at WT, which could very well cause some kind of additional head-ringing effect.

1 hour ago, GameboyAK said:

By doing what you suggest, you throw off the balance of the entire game simply for one little thing that is counter productive.

You have no idea, because you haven't played it. It balances just fine. But it very much does depend on play style and there are probably other mitigating factors I'm not quantifying that make it work for me. I probably run my whole game very differently from you, so it's a bit audacious of you to decide what is working at my table...

4 minutes ago, whafrog said:

Sure, but that's the problem with hit point games anyway. In some ways, thermal detonators aren't lethal enough in this game, they shouldn't really do WT, they should impose at least one auto-crit. In any case, using my changes, a thermal detonator is still going to crit them and Disorient them (or worse) at WT, which could very well cause some kind of additional head-ringing effect.

You have no idea, because you haven't played it. It balances just fine. But it very much does depend on play style and there are probably other mitigating factors I'm not quantifying that make it work for me. I probably run my whole game very differently from you, so it's a bit audacious of you to decide what is working

From how the specializations are designed, how damage stats are done in this system, doubling wound threshold simply does not make sense if you're trying to stay in the "theme" of Star Wars.

Its not me being audacious, its me expressing an opinion and concern based on changing not one mechanic, but the entire way you conduct combat. I already said it's your table, your rules, I'm just presenting the flip side of the coin on such a key point of the system. Are you doubling Nemesis WT as well? At what point does combat become a slog? How does it make sense that a Commando with high xp suffers a rocket launcher hit, suffers a crit from reaching your proposed WT, and is still conscious and is still conscious before activating a Signature ability in Unmatched Courage, and ends up ignoring the crit because of however many ranks of Durable and Unstoppable? I know its a specific scenario, but one I came across just my last campaign with just the RAW, and barely surviving.

You are correct in the fact that it is unlikely we run our tables the same way, but there are other solutions to this problem outside of outright removing the stims if someone has an issue to them.

54 minutes ago, Daeglan said:

they arent as tough as a PC. that is all.

A clone captain has stats that are akin to a late beginner PC. Just saying, its not really an argument of saying they shouldnt be as tough as PCs (which they are not, in the long run), but mechanically speaking, its not possible to achieve that without an extreme set of circumstances.

1 hour ago, GameboyAK said:

Because an experienced clone arc trooper can be taken down by a single shot with no prior wounds by a blaster pistol. The only way that could mechanically happen is via a ton of triumphs or a high crit roll with several ranks of Lethal Blows.

This would be what I refer to as a narrative kill. GM decides that an NPC kills an NPC, regardless of stats and damage.

6 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

This would be what I refer to as a narrative kill. GM decides that an NPC kills an NPC, regardless of stats and damage.

Its the only way it works, but if Fives were a PC rather than an NPC, it doesn't, which is my point in terms of mechanics vs narrative. I rarely do this with my NPCs, because my PCs have seen them take worse damage, and them suddenly dying from a single shot breaks the immersion of the game for me and some of my players. Its only in specific circumstances where this happens.

1 minute ago, GameboyAK said:

Its the only way it works, but if Fives were a PC rather than an NPC, it doesn't, which is my point in terms of mechanics vs narrative. I rarely do this with my NPCs, because my PCs have seen them take worse damage, and them suddenly dying from a single shot breaks the immersion of the game for me and some of my players. Its only in specific circumstances where this happens.

I agree, but I'd say this is that specific circumstance.

In the case of a PC, the simple solution is to just not have it happen. There are constraints to RPG systems, and having an incredibly lethal system is not going to be all that fun. It's fairly rare for people to like it when their characters can die instantaneously because someone got marginally lucky.

As for "taking significantly more damage" a shot to the heart is pretty bad. It all comes down to how you narrate the damage they take. Getting hit with a missile in the face is going to leave much more of a mark (well, more precisely, a lot less too mark) than being on the edge of the blast radius.

10 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

There are constraints to RPG systems, and having an incredibly lethal system is not going to be all that fun. It's fairly rare for people to like it when their characters can die instantaneously because someone got marginally lucky.

The opposite end of the spectrum isn't fun for everyone either. Power fantasy games like DND get monotonous because after a certain point with a party, there is almost no risk to combat. I like how the system is now, and while I understand how some people can have issues with certain things like stims, it maintains the look and feel of Star Wars while still maintaining actual fun, at least at my table.

16 minutes ago, GameboyAK said:

You are correct in the fact that it is unlikely we run our tables the same way, but there are other solutions to this problem outside of outright removing the stims if someone has an issue to them.

Why would I even need to entertain that? I do not like having stims in the game. I don't like that they even exist in the game, nor that the game RAW seems to require them to exist. Their very existence breaks the Star Wars feel for me, and renaming them, or narrating them differently doesn't solve that. Besides, there are plenty of games with mechanics that do not require magical potion popping to make the game work, and if I can find a balanced way to make that work it shouldn't be any skin off your nose.

19 minutes ago, GameboyAK said:

Its not me being audacious, its me expressing an opinion and concern based on changing not one mechanic, but the entire way you conduct combat. I already said it's your table, your rules, I'm just presenting the flip side of the coin on such a key point of the system. Are you doubling Nemesis WT as well? At what point does combat become a slog?

No, the opponents don't benefit, unless I just reskin them. I've always found RAW combat a slog in this game after turn 2 or 3, so I try to break things up with chases. But you'd be surprised that this change (for me at least) makes combat *less* of a slog. The key difference is that players have more agency, with far fewer grinding sessions where they are at the mercy of whoever is still conscious to get over to them and stab them with a needle. I don't know about you, but my players tend to deflate when their turn comes up and all they can say is "I lay there, waiting to be rescued". I'd rather give them some semblance of control, even if it's just to crawl through broken glass like John McClain in a Die Hard movie.

21 minutes ago, GameboyAK said:

How does it make sense that a Commando with high xp suffers a rocket launcher hit, suffers a crit from reaching your proposed WT, and is still conscious and is still conscious before activating a Signature ability in Unmatched Courage, and ends up ignoring the crit because of however many ranks of Durable and Unstoppable?

Urg. Obviously you/your table enjoy the bean counting aspects of the game. I am blessed/cursed with a much more casual group. I think they had a rocket launcher once, with one missile, and then it was too heavy to carry at speed so they left it behind. Sounds like a very different style of game with very different priorities.

19 minutes ago, whafrog said:

Why would I even need to entertain that? I do not like having stims in the game. I don't like that they even exist in the game, nor that the game RAW seems to require them to exist. Their very existence breaks the Star Wars feel for me, and renaming them, or narrating them differently doesn't solve that. Besides, there are plenty of games with mechanics that do not require magical potion popping to make the game work, and if I can find a balanced way to make that work it shouldn't be any skin off your nose.

No, the opponents don't benefit, unless I just reskin them. I've always found RAW combat a slog in this game after turn 2 or 3, so I try to break things up with chases. But you'd be surprised that this change (for me at least) makes combat *less* of a slog. The key difference is that players have more agency, with far fewer grinding sessions where they are at the mercy of whoever is still conscious to get over to them and stab them with a needle. I don't know about you, but my players tend to deflate when their turn comes up and all they can say is "I lay there, waiting to be rescued". I'd rather give them some semblance of control, even if it's just to crawl through broken glass like John McClain in a Die Hard movie.

Urg. Obviously you/your table enjoy the bean counting aspects of the game. I am blessed/cursed with a much more casual group. I think they had a rocket launcher once, with one missile, and then it was too heavy to carry at speed so they left it behind. Sounds like a very different style of game with very different priorities.

My players actually rarely fall unconscious, and I tend to throw a lot at them. I have on average of 6 people at the table, up to 8 in one session. They're used to working as a team to achieve something and have pulled off some very 80s action movie moments. If they do fall unconscious, its because they pulled something risky and it didn't pay off or its an extended firefight that they get unlucky on towards the end. Its not bean counting so much as it is high risk, high reward, taking on a tank and a platoon of troopers by the seat of their pants, maybe only using one or two stims the entire time. Combats for us rarely last more than 4-5 rounds, unless its a big set piece battle or boss encounter they knew was coming and wanted to be a part of.

I'm not trying to disrespect you or you table, that wasn't my intention and I apologize if I came across that way. Like I said, my intention was to show the flip side for players outside of you or me, for the ones that don't know if stims belong or not, or if they're just not balanced, not to change your table.

I gotta say, a lot of us (including me) keep missing OP's point entirely. This is not a post about "whether or not stims should be in the game." In OP's game, stims are going out. He doesn't like them (and several of us agree with him), so anything arguing whether they should or shouldn't be in the game is a derailment. As far as this thread should be concerned, they're gone, come to peace with it.

What we need to be focusing on is, "stims are gone, as written, how do we mitigate the effects on healing, and what do we do about talents that rely on them?"

Now, mechanically, you could get by changing very little. Micheldebryun (I probably spelled that wrong) offered the first and easiest response of just changing the name. "Second Wind" works fine, and now it represents a character summoning some inner reserves of will to come back boistin' wit' vitality, rather than jamming a needle in their leg. Stim-related talents could represent a pep-talk when you're spending such a maneuver on your ally's behalf, but then it's definitely much more of a Bard schtick than a Medic schtick.

I'm also partial to Whafrog's tweaks, particularly changing healing to a Resilience roll (because Resilience gets no love in this game. Follow up: do they still heal 3 wounds on a failure? I'm kinda thinking after each use in a day add +1 difficulty, starting at 0).

28 minutes ago, The Grand Falloon said:

Follow up: do they still heal 3 wounds on a failure?

It would be a Simple check, though of course the GM is free to add setback or increase difficulty depending. If you wanted more, you could increase difficulty each time, that would have a similar effect to multiple stimpacks with decreasing effects.

3 hours ago, whafrog said:

It would be a Simple check, though of course the GM is free to add setback or increase difficulty depending.

You haven't met my players. Last session, one of them rolled five successes on a RRRP roll, but they have a knack for failing simple rolls.

10 hours ago, The Grand Falloon said:

You haven't met my players. Last session, one of them rolled five successes on a RRRP roll, but they have a knack for failing simple rolls.

You'd have to adjust for your table. 3 or 5 plus/minus the net success/failure is a reasonable ballpark.

On 5/8/2020 at 7:25 PM, The Grand Falloon said:

I gotta say, a lot of us (including me) keep missing OP's point entirely. This is not a post about "whether or not stims should be in the game." In OP's game, stims are going out. He doesn't like them (and several of us agree with him), so anything arguing whether they should or shouldn't be in the game is a derailment. As far as this thread should be concerned, they're gone, come to peace with it.

What we need to be focusing on is, "stims are gone, as written, how do we mitigate the effects on healing, and what do we do about talents that rely on them?"

Now, mechanically, you could get by changing very little. Micheldebryun (I probably spelled that wrong) offered the first and easiest response of just changing the name. "Second Wind" works fine, and now it represents a character summoning some inner reserves of will to come back boistin' wit' vitality, rather than jamming a needle in their leg. Stim-related talents could represent a pep-talk when you're spending such a maneuver on your ally's behalf, but then it's definitely much more of a Bard schtick than a Medic schtick.

I'm also partial to Whafrog's tweaks, particularly changing healing to a Resilience roll (because Resilience gets no love in this game. Follow up: do they still heal 3 wounds on a failure? I'm kinda thinking after each use in a day add +1 difficulty, starting at 0).

Thanks for this.

I'm thinking it is not too big an issue to outright remove stims.

I think there have been some great ideas presented in this thread. I haven't seen any conflicts from other talents or specializations either, so I think it should be fine.

I can understand both sides of the argument.

Yes, we do not see ( I never watched the Clone Wars ) usage of stim packs and so you can say for sure that they do not feel right in your SW universe.

On the other hand it is the game and the angle of rules it uses that makes them nescessary to me.

The Characters of the group are the heroes, same as the guys in the movies and whereas the Movie heroes are almost never hurt in firefights, in this game it is inevitable.

So I can live with it and it neither shakes my nor my gamer colleagues Star Wars feel, so we use them.

5 hours ago, dreenan said:

I can understand both sides of the argument.

Yes, we do not see ( I never watched the Clone Wars ) usage of stim packs and so you can say for sure that they do not feel right in your SW universe.

On the other hand it is the game and the angle of rules it uses that makes them nescessary to me.

The Characters of the group are the heroes, same as the guys in the movies and whereas the Movie heroes are almost never hurt in firefights, in this game it is inevitable.

So I can live with it and it neither shakes my nor my gamer colleagues Star Wars feel, so we use them.

Yeah. The choice is either have things not injure characters. Or have things injure character but have to wait forever for characters to heal. Or have something to allow for rapid healing so the gm can more on.

On 5/8/2020 at 1:57 AM, Bellona said:

I'm honestly confused by those comments which seem to imply that stimpack don't have diminishing returns.

Mine was a quick edit, I didn't explain what I actually do in detail since this isn't my thread.

I include the diminishing returns of RAW, but I also have "stimpack jitters" if you fail Resilience after taking too many in a 24 hour period (can Disorient). Plus I make the "stimlulation packs" more about stimulation and less about healing. An hour after they are used, a player takes 2 Wounds back per pack used. So, if you used 3 stims, healing 12, to get yourself back in the fight, after the battle you drop 6 Wounds. Depending on what happened after you got the 12 boost, you could fall over unconscious after the stims wear off.

On 5/10/2020 at 2:23 AM, Sturn said:

Mine was a quick edit, I didn't explain what I actually do in detail since this isn't my thread.

I include the diminishing returns of RAW, but I also have "stimpack jitters" if you fail Resilience after taking too many in a 24 hour period (can Disorient). Plus I make the "stimlulation packs" more about stimulation and less about healing. An hour after they are used, a player takes 2 Wounds back per pack used. So, if you used 3 stims, healing 12, to get yourself back in the fight, after the battle you drop 6 Wounds. Depending on what happened after you got the 12 boost, you could fall over unconscious after the stims wear off.

Not that I have problem with stims (video games are as much as part of my headcanon as movies) but the idea of temp. health is intriguing. I like it.

Though in this case I probably make it an incidental, so it is viable in combat. Right now, using a SP is 2 maneuvers (accessing and administering). I feel that this keeps it in check, as my players rarely sacrifice their turn to heal 5, when you can shoot the baddies. Not to mention getting someone else up, which requires even more maneuver to get to them. SP is mainly aftercombat patching up as noone in the group has Medicine or higher than 2 Intellect 😄

10 hours ago, Rimsen said:

though in this case I probably make it an incidental, so it is viable in combat. Right now, using a SP is 2 maneuvers (accessing and administering). I feel that this keeps it in check, as my players rarely sacrifice their turn to heal 5, when you can shoot the baddies. Not to mention getting someone else up, which requires even more maneuver to get to them. SP is mainly aftercombat patching up as noone in the group has Medicine or higher than 2 Intellect 😄

This got me thinking. I like the idea of a bacta version healer useful out of combat with slower healing. A bacta-patch perhaps that takes an hour for the affects to set in. Then, a stimpack could be the temporary healing of Wounds that goes away in something like 10 minutes to a 1/2 hour.