Boehm said:

Okay, I think I see where your point is in your post above: You feel that the effect of critical injuries when applied to henchmen and nemeses are underpowered compared to when they are applied to PCs. If that's the case, remember the only time critical injuries are applied to henchmen, and 90% of the time critical injuries are applied to nemeses (at least in a way that matters for this discussion), its at the attacker's discretion, meaning they spent advantages or a triumph to activate their weapon's CR. You could just as easily spend those symbol resources to apply the short term effects I think you're looking for, instead of using them on activating a crit. Some easy examples include:

• Disarming (3 Adv)
• Apply Setback to target's next check (2 Adv)
• Cause strain (1 Adv/strain)
• Knocking Prone (not actually listed, but certainly reasonable)

Overall, I like the crit system. I generally dislike "Roll on table X" mechanics, but it's rarely used in this game, so I can deal with it. The minor crits are, just that, minor. They have short term effects listed with each result. Their long term effects are the cumulative +10 penalty (bonus?) to future crit rolls, which makes the more permanent results possible. Otherwise, the incremental crit system represents player choice and risk, which is also good. When players get wounded, they have the option to bug out or take the risk of more severe crits. I'm sorry you see this as "making life misserable for PCs without actually killing or seriously disabling them." Further, separating [most] NPC damage mechanics and PC damage mechanics allows for a more cinematic game. I think its a good change, because it allows the GM to provide faceless minions without having to worry about tracking critical injuries or status effects on each individual… god what a nightmare that can be in other games.

I'm not sure what the "everyone will tell me how wrong I am" is about. And sorry if I misinterpreted the source of your issue with the mechanism. If I missed it, let us know where the problem is.

-WJL

LethalDose said:

I think I misspoke: I don't think inflicting strain as a listed way of expending advantage on attack rolls. At least I don't see it listed in RAW.

I don't want to derail Boehm's question/comment, but I'm curious what the community thinks of adding an option to spend attack roll advantage to cause strain damage on the target.

-WJL

LethalDose said:

No worries - Im just used to feel misunderstood my point was that I DO think the crit system works great when applied against the PCs but when applied against henchmen and nemesis a lot of the results feel (even high level ones) feel rather 'mehh' … I would just like to see some of the trauma wounds atleast apply a lose next maneuver or drop item or something to atleast have an immediate impact as well …as it is often talents like lethal strike feel rather useless …whereas against the PCs its a feared ability …I just mean that whether a stat loss is permanent or not doesnt really matter much to a henchman

LethalDose said:

I do value your feedback, your comments are always constructive, so even if we dont fully agree on everything I appreciate it

seadaily said:

I actually agree with *both* view points of this issue. Wounds, as descriptively represented, are near-misses and bruises. They should come off fairly quickly. Critical Hits, on the other hand, should take a while, especially the stuff in the orange and red zones (and some of the yellow zone).

My recommendation would be to double the natural rest healing rate to 2/night, but still only allow the Resilience check to recover from one Critical Injury per full week of rest. That takes care of the bruises and scrapes quickly enough, but the continued threat of Critical Injuries (including the persistent +10 cumulative modifier on future Critical Injury rolls That gets your characters back on their feet pretty quickly if they've just been knocked about a bit, but keeps combat dangerous, because the subtle, lasting effects of continually getting beat up will linger, and picking up an orange or red critical will mean you're going to be seriously hurting until you get genuine medical attention.

Slaunyeh said:

True, true. I ran a one-shot for some friends, and the doctor kept missing the checks that would let her see the nasty beasties. Right up until the moment that one materialized, and nearly one-shotted the two toughest bad-asses in the group. You've never *seen* a group run (or limp!) away from a fight so fast in your life!

LethalDose said:

I like the idea.

Logic states that it would require physical damage.

If a critical hit can dismember someone then damage is implied. Some of te critical hits could be determined as cuncussive force or disorientation which would not require damage, However a good majority of the more dangerous criticals imply injury.

I love this game so far. I have been playing WFRP off and on for years. I think EofE takes the best parts of that system and put it in an great setting.

Concern: This rule set I think will have a problem I have seen before in other campaigns. If you want to kick ass in combat you will be good at little else, to be good at skill encounters you will suck in combat. Players with skill oriented characters will get depressed in combat encounters. Players who kick ass in combat get board in skill challenges. Generalist are second rate at everything.

Suggestion: Make many attributes and skills have uses in combat. Some of this is already in the rules. The doctor has Stem Application talent. The leader has Inspiring Rhetoric and Field Commander talent. More of this would keep everyone engaged in all the encounters. For example:

Weapon: MM9 wrist rocket: Computer guided missile is mounded on the wrist. When making range attacks use commuters skill instead of ranged (light) skill. You may spend a maneuver to program the missile and ignore cover. (Computers, dam 8, crit 3, encumbrance 3, range medium, limited ammo 1, stun setting, 1500 credits + 100 credits per missile)

Talent: devious maneuver: You may as an action distract or confuse your opponent. Disconnect the power pack of his blaster, knock him off balance, throw sand in his eyes or convince him you have a thermal detonator. Must be within short range. Roll a opposed cunning test. If you succeed your opponent loses he next action. If you succeed with two triumphs you negate his defense for the next round.

Bones made an interesting point. I could be reasonable to attach skill checks to some of the maneuvers. This would be an easy way to introduce some

Some problems/concerns this could cause:

1. Slows the game with more checks
2. 'Wasted' maneuvers on fails
3. Breaks the "Skill checks are actions" guideline.
4. increases game complexity adding rules for their use

Not all these are major issues, but they are merit concern when discussing including them in the system.

-WJL

just some more input on autofire from a test last night.

For the test I pitted the same three characters against an average joe Henchman with an autofire gun while they carried normal guns. The range was medium and each character had cover and was aiming as their maneuver. Each character had 4 Agility and 2 ranks of Ranged combat. We did 5 quick combats. Twice one PC suffered a critical wound, once two of them did, once they suffered no casualties, and one time on some poor rolling from the PC's the Henchman wiped out the party. We did 5 more combats with the Henchman adding 2 difficulty dice and attempting to walk fire from one target to the next and the extra difficulty dice really made a difference, Once the Henchman took down two of the PC's but the other 4 times they beat him unscathed.

This was a short little test and certainly not conclusive in any way, but the PC's certainly felt cheated when they would be incapacitated in one action. Don't get me wrong I like games with lethal combat I think it adds realism, but auto fire is extremely, extremely strong. I would recommend limiting it to a small number of extremely cumbersome weapons, as well as increasing the activation costs. Even if you make it the same as Linked you are still going to get double hits that will one shot PC's. Granted it is really handy for mowing through minions but that is easy enough to do already and then can make combat trivial for the PC's.

Granted any combat challenge can be too hard for the PC's however it is my feeling that Autofire is too abundant and common and should be something rare and scary they run into and shouldn't be used as a method to turn encounters into an exercise of shooting fish in a barrel for the PC's as that also can reduce the excitement of the game if things are too easy.

About auto-fire: What about making it even more difficult? instead of adding 1 difficulty die when attacking with auto-fire, you add 2 (perhaps one of them being a challenge die be default), and then a setback die for walking fire - or keep walking fire at another difficulty die, either way its 3 extra dice in total, which greatly reduces the chance for activation of extra hits on many opponents, and 2 for hitting minions or the one target.

Either way I would increase the cost to 2 advantages - (and)/or lower the damage of auto-fire weapons.

I have another question about auto-fire: the use of this quality must be declared yes? Since it requires +1 difficulty die I assume that it cannot be activated during a normal attack.

AUTOFIRE - my revised suggestion

* Upgrade difficulty by 1 (to give a chance of a dispair - ei. hitting innocent bystanders or shooting yourself in teh face etc.)

* Gain 2 boost dice (its easier to hit 'something' when spraying lots of bullits around)

* 1 advantage to hit additional targets ('2' if targets are prone or in heavy cover)

* Suppression: use advantages to add setback to whole 'engagement' rather than just single targets

* Additional success adds +2 to damage rather than usual +1

Thoughts: I have a bias against larger weapon in this setting. Weapons larger than the blast rifle rarely appeared in the movies. Large guns complicate roll playing. It is hard to convince someone you come in peace while trying to conceal a gun the size of your leg. I would like to see the blast pistol reasonably competitive with the heavy blast rifle even if that compromises realism.

Concern: In my tests the extra difficulty of Auto fire plus cumbersome makes the heavy blast rifle reasonably balanced for a starting character. In the hands of a character with high agility, skilled in range (heavy) skill plus a good brawn the damage of Auto fire weapons explodes to double the damage of the same character with smaller weapons.

Idea: No extra difficulty die and always effects all targets in an engagement (friend of foe). Start with low damage (like 8). Each extra success does +2 damage to one target in the engagement. Critical hits or other affects from advantages effect one target hit of players choice. You may spend an advantage to cause one target to upgrade the difficulty of attacks made next round by one due to suppressive fire. Advantages can activate suppresive fire even on a miss.

Bones1968 said:

I would worry that your recommendation, while valid, doesn't fit with what the devs have recently said about AF:

FFG_Sam Stewart said:

(emphasis THEIRS, not mine)

I'd be concerned the devs would find your recommendation both complicated and not worthwhile. Further, I think you've reiterated some ideas that don't work well and were responded to in the equipment thread.

Suppression always gets mentioned. Because of how suppressive fire works, I think it should be a separate action, not an advantage option. I can't remember if other individuals on the forum agreed with this in multiple previous posts, or if it was from one vocal individual who got banned. It's also something I think belongs in a game with a tactical/strategic focus, like I suspect Age of Rebellion will be.

Finally, one the one hand I would like to see more difficulty upgrades instead of increases, since the upgrade mechanic seems to be a woefully underutilized mechanic. The other hand, the upgrade mechanic is rather 'borked' at the current time.

So, until we show AF fundamentally doesn't work as its written (I think it fundamentally DOES work), lets stop trying to fundamentally rewrite the mechanic. At the current time, we should be focused on changes to activation costs, penalties, roll interpretations, etc that go into or come out of AF activations.

-WJL

LethalDose said:

I think auto-fire works, but I think it's fundamentally too powerful, especially given the other statistics assigned to auto-fire capable weapons.

The *least* dangerous auto-fire weapon has Damage 10. If, for example, you were to roll a net 4 successes and 2 advantage (I actually just rolled that), your attack would deal up to 39 points of damage to a single target, or 26 & 13, or 13, 13, & 13. That's a *lot* of damage in this system. Even a target with a Soak of 5 would take 24 points of damage from that attack if it were all focused on that single target.

My recommendation would be to add a challenge die for difficulty, and double the advantage cost or require a scaling number of advantages to activate auto-fire (1 for the first additional hit, 2 for the second, 3 for the third, etc.). Maybe even, provide an addendum that you can't 'hit' the same target more than once, or at least that it costs extra to do so, but then it starts getting complicated.

Maybe just make it so that, with auto-fire weapons, you can use an advantage as a single, unsoakable, point of damage that you can dish out to another target in the same range band?

Voice said:

You ever see a machine gun in action? It makes a mess out of it's target.

The designers have stated that their clear intent for autofire was to make it "good." It should be a terrifying prospect to go up against a force that has weapons of this caliber in open combat, and it should encourage the PCs to think laterally on how else they might be able to accomplish their goals.

And, to put it bluntly, you have to look at the source material and you have to take it into account when looking at these weapons. The designers are admitted Star Wars fans. They have freelancers who have years of experience working on Star Wars games writing for them. This stuff has been designed with the setting in mind.

These weapons are not common sights outside of a military force where they need that level of firepower. Obtaining them, keeping them powered, and moving them around are going to be a pain for a small group, especially if they don't have the necessary permits to own and operate one. Hell, even if you do, most civilized worlds simply aren't going to let you carry it around on the streets. Regardless of the fact that it may be legal to own one, do you think you're going to get away with carrying an assault weapon slung over your shoulder in any city in this country without being stopped, most likely detained and thoroughly questioned? It's not going to happen.

And when you have criminal syndicates operating as the law in the towns your PCs are likely to be frequenting, I can almost guarantee you that line of questioning is going to be quite a bit more… tortuous.

I've been thinking a bit. The fear rules cover this bit. If you're outnumbered only slightly, roll for fear… Add a setback for big weapons and upgrade difficulty for auto-firing opponents during/before/at beginning of combat. That's why the fear rules are there. I don't think there's a need for an extra mechanic for auto-fire, when the fear rules/guidelines already - sort of - cover it.

Initiative:

What technique would you use when both the success and advantage tie on a initiative roll. A re-roll? Using a d10?

Also, would you let someone aware of a incoming fight to choose his best between either Vigilance or Cool?

Initiative:

What technique would you use when both the success and advantage tie on a initiative roll. A re-roll? Using a d10?

Also, would you let someone aware of a incoming fight to choose his best between either Vigilance or Cool?

Locksathy said:

Probably just cede it to the PCs. If the PC's have tied slots… they can work it out amongst themselves.

Locksathy said:

The books make it pretty clear you use Cool if the player is aware combat's a-coming. Vigilance pretty much explicitly unallowed here so, no, I wouldn't allow the choice.

-WJL

Locksathy said:

In the case of a tie between a PC and NPC, you can either have them roll-off (I'd suggest either a simple d6 or if you want to stick to EotE's dice, an Ability die, with the winner being the one to roll the most Advantages), or give it to which ever person had the most Proficiency dice in their dice pool.

Or as LethalDose said, just cede it to the PCs and keep things moving, which is the easiest solution by far.

As written, the answer to the second question would be Cool, as that's called out in the skill's description as being what's used when the character is fully aware the incoming fight. Vigilance is only when combat is a surprise, such as rounding a corner and seeing the bounty hunter that's been gunning for you, or walking into a Black Sun ambush.

Personally, I think Cool could very easily be dropped and it's uses split between Discipline (resisting social skills) and Vigilance (initiative), but that's a very different discussion.

Locksathy said:

Heroes/PCs act first. Done.

Venthrac said:

Agreed. Except for when dramaturgical considerations require otherwise.

And if PC's tie, it's still just a matter of picking who acts first - the actual tie between them doesn't affect the order of play a whit… because the players PICK who goes on each initiative point.

Thank you guys!