I know auto fire comes up as a frustrating aspect for some, but I find linked more immersion breaking and thus frustrating. For me the issue is the narrative vs the mechanical aspect of the two. A round can be up to a minute and the damage you do is based on the number of successes you have which can really represent multiple shots. I think my biggest issue is how linked is so hard-coded to the number of barrels that a weapon has. The idea that if I have two barrels I can double my damage for two advantage but no matter how much I shoot with my single barrel weapon I can't. That's the part that I think bugs me.

So what if we changed linked to be something more like you can add damage equal to the linked value for 2 advantage?

I also like the idea that every additional crit activation on a minion group removes an additional minion. This allows the narrative of gunning down a lot of minions without worrying about increasing the damage to ridiculous levels.

I was also thinking about allowing players to fire rapidly at a single or multiple groups much like autofire. You add a difficulty die, and you use the highest difficulty and can spend 3 advantage to hit again or the second group. Since this isn't an item effect, talents that reduce the amount of advantage needed wouldn't apply. But this does take away from autofire a little. So what would be a good way to make autofire a little more unique? Or maybe what would be a better way to spread things out during a long narrative round without treading on autofire?

I like them as-is. I understand your objection to Linked, but I disagree. Think of it as just having twice as many bolts in the air.

If all Linked does is add damage equal to the quality, you've just nerfed it significantly. 2 Advantage for 1 damage is really poor.

Perhaps allowing the second weapon to crit when Linked triggers rather than adding damage?

I think that is probably too much, as someone who has stacked Lethal blows is going to be really deadly if they are able to reliably crank out 2 crits every turn, even without really low-crit weapons.

I think that the best mechanical solution, even if it seems a bit odd to you, is the RAW.

I dunno, Linked is a veeery powerful ability to an extent it's not clear the designers realised. Autofire and dual-wielding are at least limited by additional difficulty (and, for dual-wielding, by the lower base damages of the weapons involved). Most weapons with Linked are melee which is a little underpowered, but something like the HH-50 is an absolute stand-out; letting you spend 2 advantage for 8+ damage is mad. That's almost sure to kill a minion (for 1A cheaper than a crit) and far better against Rivals or Nemeses.

Linked in starship combat is just mad, and means an X-wing can swing from dealing 7-40 damage per attack.

Equally, you're right that 2A for 1 damage is underwhelming. 2A for 3 on an X-wing is very much worth it though. If I had to give a suggestion, I'd make it a passive- a linked X weapon can reroll up to X dice on the attack. Changes linked weapons from being swingy to being reliable (because more fire downrange means a slightly better chance to hit for slightly more damage).

3 minutes ago, Talkie Toaster said:

Equally, you're right that 2A for 1 damage is underwhelming. 2A for 3 on an X-wing is very much worth it though. If I had to give a suggestion, I'd make it a passive- a linked X weapon can reroll up to X dice on the attack. Changes linked weapons from being swingy to being reliable (because more fire downrange means a slightly better chance to hit for slightly more damage).

Or maybe make it like Guided? On a miss, spend X Advantage to make a follow up attack, rolling Ability=Linked?

3 hours ago, Ahrimon said:

I also like the idea that every additional crit activation on a minion group removes an additional minion. This allows the narrative of gunning down a lot of minions without worrying about increasing the damage to ridiculous levels.

I implemented something similar, but a little less extreme. I allow additional crit activations against minion groups to inflict 1 additional point of damage. So, a crit against a 5 wound minion group with Lethal Blows +20 and paying the advantage for an additional crit activation results in the group taking 8 wounds. Your method, which my group tried initially, would result in 20 wounds for the same attack. It was a bit too much for us. We also tried 1 advantage = 1 additional damage and it was also too much and unbalanced. The high cost crit weapons got too much of a boost. Also, how to spend advantages became a no-brainer. With an additional crit for 1 damage, a crit 1 lightsaber picks damage. But a crit 3 blaster has a tougher choice, 1 damage or pass some blues/something else. Tough choices makes for a better game.

I appreciate the inputs. Sorry I've been busy and haven't been able to respond as soon as I would have liked.

On 8/21/2020 at 9:40 AM, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

I like them as-is. I understand your objection to Linked, but I disagree. Think of it as just having twice as many bolts in the air.

If all Linked does is add damage equal to the quality, you've just nerfed it significantly. 2 Advantage for 1 damage is really poor.

Perhaps allowing the second weapon to crit when Linked triggers rather than adding damage?

I think that is probably too much, as someone who has stacked Lethal blows is going to be really deadly if they are able to reliably crank out 2 crits every turn, even without really low-crit weapons.

I think that the best mechanical solution, even if it seems a bit odd to you, is the RAW.

Even with having more bolts in the air you are just as possible to miss with several as you are to get hit with more from a single barrel. Plus it's odd that every hit does exactly the same damage.

Allowing extra critical activations does sound like a good idea. I was also thinking about taking from that multi-missile system in the hired gun book and make it so that you add the linked rating as extra damage for each success. For example linked 2 adds 3 damage per uncancelled success.

Realistically, linked only shows up in one non-starship weapon that I know of so it's not as much of an issue for personal scale.

1 hour ago, Ahrimon said:

Realistically, linked only shows up in one non-starship weapon that I know of so it's not as much of an issue for personal scale.

Unless you are dual-wielding, which is pretty common. There are a few. Double-Bladed Lightsaber, Electrostaff, Salus DF-D1, J-10 Dual Blaster Cannon (though that's Cumbersome 5, so pushing personal-scale there and getting close to emplacement), DC-12U, HH-50, and probably others. There are also custom ones, like the twin dart launcher I statted for Mandalorian Vambraces. It's Linked 1 because it fires twin darts.

With the Double-Bladed Lightsaber and Electrostaff, I think it makes sense to have Linked. With the others, they are firing two bolts right beside each other. If you hit with one bolt, it is likely that you will hit with the second as well because of its proximity.

Stealing the thing from DC makes sense as an alternative.

On 8/21/2020 at 7:23 AM, Ahrimon said:

So what if we changed linked to be something more like you can add damage equal to the linked value for 2 advantage?

I've just changed it to be auto-fire with a cap. Otherwise it's too easy to pump out damage, and the totals are almost always higher than a target's WT or HT.

6 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

With the Double-Bladed Lightsaber and Electrostaff, I think it makes sense to have Linked.

Those types of weapons have other traits that expect one of the ends to be available and not be used for hitting. Plus, it takes extra concentration to try to hit multiple times. So if you want to try hitting more than once, I think there should be either a penalty, or you have to give up something else, like the Defensive trait or whatever for a turn or two. Since tracking temporary loss of traits is tedious, I would just go with the extra difficulty.

As mentioned above, I just use the auto-fire rule, with a cap on number of hits allowed.

14 minutes ago, whafrog said:

Those types of weapons have other traits that expect one of the ends to be available and not be used for hitting. Plus, it takes extra concentration to try to hit multiple times. So if you want to try hitting more than once, I think there should be either a penalty, or you have to give up something else, like the Defensive trait or whatever for a turn or two. Since tracking temporary loss of traits is tedious, I would just go with the extra difficulty.

As mentioned above, I just use the auto-fire rule, with a cap on number of hits allowed.

I disagree, but I'd say my biggest objection is that now you've just made Linked an all-around inferior Auto-Fire. The lack of a difficulty increase is what gives it an edge.

1 hour ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

I disagree, but I'd say my biggest objection is that now you've just made Linked an all-around inferior Auto-Fire. The lack of a difficulty increase is what gives it an edge.

Linked doesn't need to exist at all, so it doesn't need an "edge".

4 hours ago, whafrog said:

Linked doesn't need to exist at all, so it doesn't need an "edge".

Narratively it doesn't. I hadn't even considered that. I think modeling some firepower advantage for extra barrels/blades/etc is worthwhile, but linked it too mechanical for the narrative IMO.

Way back before we had personal weapons with the linked quality, I made a quality (and related attachment) that was called "doubled" or something.

It basically was two-weapon fighting related something... It's in Cartol's Emporium I believe... I can't recall the specifics, but I think it basically makes one weapon count as two for the purpose of two-weapon fighting. So nothing special, and I made for melee weapons only I think.

Personally I like Linked as a solution. It's simple, elegant, limited, and does the job. It may not be "realistic" or whatever, but it works. Particularly for ranged weapons. For melee it is slightly iffy, but it works.

On 8/21/2020 at 10:29 AM, Talkie Toaster said:

If I had to give a suggestion, I'd make it a passive- a linked X weapon can reroll up to X dice on the attack. Changes linked weapons from being swingy to being reliable (because more fire downrange means a slightly better chance to hit for slightly more damage).

I might be able to get on board with this one. 2 Advantage allows Linked to be activated (regardless of a hit or not), which allows a reroll of up to the Link quality. This in itself could increase damage and increase chance to hit, if you roll 2 Advantage during the first roll.

But, getting hit with all 4 cannons on an X-wing at once should be something that can happen even if extremely rarely. So, also give Link an extra hit (like it is now) with each Triumph rolled.

So, an X-wing rolls a Triumph and 2 Advantage on a successful attack. Due to the Triumph, 2 cannons hit, and the player may choose to reroll two of his/her dice that rolled bad, hoping for even better successes (increasing damage), or crossing fingers for another Triumph.

Or, an X-wing rolls a miss with 2 Advantage. The player picks up two of the dice which had bad results (noting that he can't wipe out the 2 Advantages allowing him to do this in the first place). He gains a success, allowing a hit.

I've been playing Star Wars for about 6 years, both IRL and via PBP. No one thay I've gamed with has ever had an issue with Autofire or Linked used "As Is".

It is just a game, after all...

6 hours ago, salamar_dree said:

It is just a game, after all...

Ssshhhh! Careful. Some may take offence at such blanket statements...

11 hours ago, salamar_dree said:

I've been playing Star Wars for about 6 years, both IRL and via PBP. No one thay I've gamed with has ever had an issue with Autofire or Linked used "As Is".

It is just a game, after all...

Yep. An awesome game with an awesome narrative system. It's the narrative aspect that I really love it. Well, that and it's star wars. I just find when mechanics get too tied to things outside of the narrative then it bugs me. I don't have a problem with linked per se. I have problem with linked and how it's hard coded to the number of barrels something has. Why? Why in a narrative system where you can blast away from any where from a few seconds to a minute does the number of barrels play such a hard-coded role. That's why I would like to see something a bit more narrative based and wanted to toss some ideas around the community to see what others thought.

47 minutes ago, Ahrimon said:

Yep. An awesome game with an awesome narrative system. It's the narrative aspect that I really love it. Well, that and it's star wars. I just find when mechanics get too tied to things outside of the narrative then it bugs me. I don't have a problem with linked per se. I have problem with linked and how it's hard coded to the number of barrels something has. Why? Why in a narrative system where you can blast away from any where from a few seconds to a minute does the number of barrels play such a hard-coded role. That's why I would like to see something a bit more narrative based and wanted to toss some ideas around the community to see what others thought.

It’s because each additional barrel multiplies the number of shots fired, regardless of how many actual rounds each barrel fires. If there are two barrels, that’s twice as many rounds going down range. If there are three barrels, that triples the number of rounds; four barrels, quadruples the shots fired. That is why it does so much damage.

10 hours ago, Tramp Graphics said:

It’s because each additional barrel multiplies the number of shots fired, regardless of how many actual rounds each barrel fires. If there are two barrels, that’s twice as many rounds going down range. If there are three barrels, that triples the number of rounds; four barrels, quadruples the shots fired. That is why it does so much damage.

That seems to be only half the equation. In the very old X-Wing game, if you had the barrels cycling individually you could hold the trigger down and do the "spray and pray". Each barrel that hit would do minimal damage but would increase your odds of hitting and at least doing *something*. Or you could alternate doubles...less frequency, more effective; or you could fire all four in a single shot that made it hard to hit but was devastating.

I'd prefer mechanics more like that. But in this game, one hit is already devastating, two is nuts and Linked is far too easy to trigger. A TIE hitting with Linked can make for a really bad day for YT-1300, and it's far too easy to come by. Adding the extra die requirement for Autofire mitigates the issue somewhat.

31 minutes ago, whafrog said:

That seems to be only half the equation. In the very old X-Wing game, if you had the barrels cycling individually you could hold the trigger down and do the "spray and pray". Each barrel that hit would do minimal damage but would increase your odds of hitting and at least doing *something*. Or you could alternate doubles...less frequency, more effective; or you could fire all four in a single shot that made it hard to hit but was devastating.

Indeed, X-Wing is my primary source for the fantasy of Linked. It's one reason why, per a post above, I allow 2A per Linked to remove 1F if the attack fails. Otherwise, yeah, the damage scales so well compared to other modifications that an adjustment is perfectly reasonable.

On 8/26/2020 at 11:04 PM, Tramp Graphics said:

It’s because each additional barrel multiplies the number of shots fired, regardless of how many actual rounds each barrel fires. If there are two barrels, that’s twice as many rounds going down range. If there are three barrels, that triples the number of rounds; four barrels, quadruples the shots fired. That is why it does so much damage.

That is not an absolute. In some cases more barrels does, in most Star Wars examples, it doesn't. Take the quad laser cannon. If you watch it firing in ANH, it's firing volleys of two bolts at a time. A twin barreled cannon could put out just as much firepower if it increased its rate of fire. Same for many of the X-Wing scenes. Each barrels fires in sequence, not in tandem. A single laser firing faster would be just as effective. Tie's do fit your explanation of both barrels firing at once. In fact, a Tie has a much higher rate of than the quad laser, so why does the quad laser get linked 3 and the Ties only linked 1?

And if we're tying it to barrels, why wouldn't a rotary gun get linked six or eight instead of autofire? They have six to eight barrels.

It's another example of the rules suddenly switching to the physical from the narrative.

On 8/28/2020 at 7:53 PM, Ahrimon said:

That is not an absolute. In some cases more barrels does, in most Star Wars examples, it doesn't. Take the quad laser cannon. If you watch it firing in ANH, it's firing volleys of two bolts at a time. A twin barreled cannon could put out just as much firepower if it increased its rate of fire. Same for many of the X-Wing scenes. Each barrels fires in sequence, not in tandem. A single laser firing faster would be just as effective. Tie's do fit your explanation of both barrels firing at once. In fact, a Tie has a much higher rate of than the quad laser, so why does the quad laser get linked 3 and the Ties only linked 1?

And if we're tying it to barrels, why wouldn't a rotary gun get linked six or eight instead of autofire? They have six to eight barrels.

In which case you’re doing an auto-fire attack rather than a set of linked weapons firing simultaneously . That’s the difference.

2 hours ago, Tramp Graphics said:

In which case you’re doing an auto-fire attack rather than a set of linked weapons firing simultaneously . That’s the difference.

But the quad laser cannon and the cannons on the X-wing don't fire simultaneously . So how do you explain that? (*grabs popcorn* This aught to be good.)

It's obvious that neither of you are going to convince the other to accept a different view. I, personally, don't have a problem with the RAW.

But if it doesn't work for you and your group, then change it.

Truthfully, you could eliminate both Autofire and Linked based on your take of the narrative. If you want to add some perk like Boosts (i.e.: Accurate) or rerolls or extra damage, go for it. Whatever works for you.