Hello Testers,

This thread is stickied for the purpose of posting feedback and content for the dice mechanics specifically. Thanks, everyone!

I love the destiny pool mechanic. My gaming group thinks of it as similar to "rocket tag," but the back and forth nature of these points is quite nice.

I have been reading over the " interpreting the pool" section and just a thought, you might want to add a dice result quick reference chart. Can be very handy for new players to the game as well as your products. I have never used custom dice before myself and seems like it can be quite handy. You can sell it as gm screen if need be. I just think it would help out alot for people not used to this format.

Ski

I think the "Dice Symbols & Results" Can be combined and consolidated as well. I think there can be a way to combine the Positive and Negative Results on to a single page rather then 2 pages. For the most part it explains how each symbol cancels out each other and I think it gets redundant after reading the positive results and then going into the negative results. I think it could just read a lil bit better to a new player imo.

After our first session I would suggest putting one less triumph/detriment facing on the dice. I did appreciate the narrative flair, and I get that most times actions will have some effect, good or bad, even if only minor. However by the end of the session I think narrative fatigue was setting in for the GM to think up descriptions of what happened on a dice roll. As it is the green and purple dice have half their facings with a triumph or detriment symbol. I would suggest dropping this to 3 facings. You still get a decent number of narrative results, but not on almost every roll.

After looking things over I realized that custom dice are cool and well would make FFG more money from hungry star wars like myself. I would suggest that you create a conversion chart for regular dice.

I don't have my book yet but there is a conversion chart in it already. Friend of mine has his book.

Darksyntax said:

page 12 in the beta book. Top of the page has table 1-1 " using standard dice in the edge of the empire"

lowdog said:

I would recomened that a GM suffering narative fatigue would be better suited to passing some control to players. I a recent episode of Happy Jack's RPG podcast a host commented that his favorite thing to do when a PC fumbled a roll was to ask the player how he screwed it up. They claimed that their players were harsher to themselves than they would be as GM. I think this has a lot of merit. Also I like rolling lots of advantages.

lowdog said:

You must mean the Advantage and Disadvantage symbols. The Triumph and Despair symbols only exist on the yellow Proficiency and red Challenge dice, and only on one face each. There's a whole table of things you can do with Advantage and Disadvantage in the book.

Awesome, I don't know how i missed that!

Darksyntax said:

anytime!

cetiken said:

Another thing to remember about narrative fatigue or coming up blank with interpretations. There are always simple mechanic shifts to fall back on.

When the narrative force is flowing, makes sense, or if players have cool feedback on the dice then go for it 100%. But when the idea pool starts looking a bit shallow for a swan dive? " Alright Bill, you succeeded and also suffer/regain one strain. Alright Corey what are you going to do? " Sure it might not have the cinematic flair of your dreams, but it'll get you through a dry spell until the next time an action or test hits you like a cinematic lightning bolt complete with John Woo style doves flying through the air.

When you view Strain as morale and momentum, this works well. A great success inspires a hero and his allies, bolstering their confidence, which explains why Strain is recovered. As you say, it's not glamorous or particularly creative, but it is perfectly sensible.

We have played several sessions now and, while very happy with nearly all of the system, we have found the sheer number of Advantages and Threats that come up on the dice to be distracting. We don't have issues developing them into story points, it's just that there are so many of them that they no longer seem interesting, and they become a superfluous distraction (which we don't think any core mechanic should be!).

We all agreed that if the number of Advantages and Threats were reduced (by about two symbols per die) it would really help move the game along at a faster pace. Of course, the other mechanics relating to the symbols would have to be adjusted (most notably, weapons' Crit values), but it could be fairly simple.

We think that the number of Successes and Failures on the dice are good, though, and that only the number of Advantages and Threats need be changed.

Further, we think that any Star Wars game should be high action and fast paced, emulating the movies. After the first few sessions of learning the rules, we have found that the system picks up pace significantly. The more we play the game, the faster nearly all of the system plays… except the Advantages and Threats issue. It is for this reason that we would like to see this changed.

Just to chime in, I'm of the opinion in other threads that we need some concrete examples of how to apply the upgrading die principles to combat (both space and personal).

bbarlowglamdring said:

I'm going to disagree, but I'll add that this is based off listening to the Order 66 session, and what I feel like I'd enjoy, and not numerous plays of my own.

"Swing and a Miss" gets old. Its one of the more draining parts of any tabletop game. The fact that you almost never see that in EotE is a huge plus, because it keeps things constantly shifting. So, your opponent misses you, but Oh! You take advantage of it and get a maneuver! I'd rather something like that happen a dozen times than just straight misses. And thats all you'd get by stripping out Advantage/Threat symbols--more straight, boring misses.

That doesn't seem superfluous to me, because it allows the combat to be flowing and changing even when its not the target player or NPCs turn, and that keeps people engaged and interested in every roll. If i'm just sitting there wondering if I'm going to take some damage, then I'm not all that invested. If I'm sitting there, hoping for a Despair or Threat to come up on my attacker's roll? Then I am having a much better time in the game over all.

I encourage you to give it a try. I thought precisely like you do before I played. It sounds great on paper, but doesn't translate to the table. It gets distracting and, ultimately, boring. YMMV.

Inksplat said:

Agreed. This is why I like how Defense is very scarce in EotE, while Soak is much more prevalent. It's far more exciting when attacks regularly hit. It's thrilling for the players because they get to take out bad guys with greater frequency. It's also exciting because it feels dangerous to get hit, even if Soak eats up some, or most, of that damage. Suffering Strain or Wounds creates pressure and suspense and promotes a sense of urgency. Attacks that miss do very little to add to that, or to move the combat forward.

The one thing I don't want is to have to buy new dice for each of these games, with that in mind they need to have some wiggle room with how the dice function, extra advantages & threats may be dormant now but as the power level increases they may add rules that use them.

A little rules clarification for me please, if someone will be so kind…

When the rules state that you add your extra successes, or that extra successes enable you to certain benefits, do they mean the successes that are counted AFTER the 1 needed to succeed (so if your rolled 3 successes, then 2 count as extra successes), or do they mean all 3 are counted?

An example: in combat, successes are added to damage. Would this mean, for instance that 3 successes would increase your lightsaber damage from 10 to 13, or to 12?

Shakespearian_Soldier said:

I've been reading it as "each success after the first." So for your example, the lightsaber hit would do 12 damage.

Donovan Morningfire said:

I've been reading it that way as well, but I couldn't help but notice that this (counting degrees of successes) was kinda awkward in Dark Heresy, and they 'fixed' it for Black Crusade, so it could go either way.

I feel inclined to do the same: count each success after the first as "additional".

I thought each success added +1 to attack damage. Not each EXTRA success, but each success. Do I have that wrong?