Solid changes all around.

Personally I would have liked to see something more on defenses in general (I recognize the game is tooled in such a way to strongly tend toward success). It just feels that any time you are being attacked, there is very little you can do to prevent that. And if its a serious foe, most of the weapons can take down a capable PC fairly quickly.

Also, obviously Force resistance, although I'm less concerned about that (as I get that the Force really isn't supposed to be very common in game).

Good to see the clarifications on melee damage, and that the combat skill section is brought in line with the actual combat mechanics. The species changes are interesting, but now it feels more difficult to balance specieis/generate new ones. Droids still feel particularly underpowered, given the manner in which characteristics are purchased.

In fact, the metagame of "buy as many characteristic improvements at character creation" is still present. I'm not sure if it should be dealt with, but its a fairly legitimate case where one decision is inherently greater than another.

Inksplat said:

Can you clarify this a bit for me? Why is increasing the XP cost of all talent trees balancing? Can you give me an example of picking up a talent tree for skills being cheaper than buying the skill itself?

I just completed character generation for my group and this never came up so I'm just seeing an XP increase across that board and that seems strange.

selderane said:

The idea is that for 10xp, you could pick up an out of career spec, and train 3 different skills that are part of its career skills. Since each non-career skill has a 5xp "tax" assigned to it, buying 3 of the new career skills results in a savings of 15 xp. Subtract the initial 10xp cost, and all of a sudden you wind up with a 5 xp savings, (30 xp for 3 rank 1 non career skills, or 10xp for new spec + 15 for 3 rank 1 career skills).

20xp doesn't really solve the "problem" but it does push it back a bit. Enough at least that its not something a player is going to do lightly.

KommissarK said:

Or a Hired Gun, for example, you could pick up both in-career specs, grab a bunch of starting toughness/grit/whatever that is permanent, then drop them and pick up ANOTHER spec for some more.

And was this all the XP increase was supposed to address?

Unknown of course, but its probably the big thing. 10-20xp is still chump change in the grand scheme of this game (if its seriously a recommended 10xp per session).

Making out of career specs 20xp just makes it an actual decision instead of something one just picks up.

Now I want my copy even more… I have lost contact with the tracking, last registered 28 august some sorting facility… should be here soon I hope!

Sam

With the clarification on starting credits and the addition of rolling one d100 to determine pocket change, can an update be done to the SW Dice App to add a d100 die to the RPG dice. Then we wouldn't need to carry around one die for that one time roll.

Thanks for all the hard work you all have been doing, the game is so Epic and a blast to play. I can't wait to see the final product!

Shawn

Darth_Dogg said:

The starwars dice app has percentile dice you can use.

KommissarK said:

I actually found the lack of "defense" against ranged attacks to be pretty balanced and exciting. Players run for cover which (contrary to what most people seem to "see") matches the movies pretty well. I vote for keeping the to-hit mechanics as they are.

My compliments to the designers for hearing and responding to the fans and beta testers. I enjoy very much the direction the game is going and appreciate the attention given to updates. Keep up the great work!

GoblynByte said:

Oh certainly, Its just I'm not sure how useful 1 setback die is as a means of "defense."

KommissarK said:

Hmmm… yeah, maybe upping that to two would be useful. Hits were pretty rare in the one session I played, but how much of that was due to the single setback die is arguable.

KommissarK said:

Dropping prone while behind cover will give you a second as well. That, and running away is an option. There is lots of running away from blaster fire in the OT.

Inksplat said:

And systems that don't default everything to "stand and fight" is better in terms of storytelling, in my opinion. Sometimes running away (or surrendering) makes for a great story!

Thinking of it, in both A New Hope and Empire, I don't think they ever -don't- run away, except for the Death Star attack run.

Inksplat said:

Han chases down the stormtroopers… but then proceeds to retreat. Han, Chewie, and Luke stand out in the open in the Detention Center, but they had the advantage of surprise. Other than that, though, you're right. This has been one of my soap boxes for years. People define "being heroic" in RPGs as being able to stand out in the fray of bullets taking multiple hits and shaking them off like nothing happened. And somehow they think that's emulation of the source material. But that just doesn't jive with what we see in the movies.

Yeah, the only real "stand and fight" moment was Han, Luke and Chewie's attack on the detention center, but even then they are forced to retreat as more troops arrive.

BTW, I think the defense mechanic works just fine as is.

Yancy

Gallandro said:

Especially when you take into account how easy it is to dole out setback dice to your opponents through use of Advantages, or even to give yourself a boost to Defense on a particularly good roll.

Donovan Morningfire said:

Yessss! I know I personally found the level of lethality to be quite satisfying. I think the players got a feeling of danger, knowing that a couple blows could take them out, but nobody actually had been taken out. There was, I think, only one significant strike on a player and it wasn't fatal by any stretch. Maybe one crit on a player and it wasn't noteworthy. I think the result of the crit caused a destiny point to flip over to the Dark Side.

All in all, the combat system added a good mixture of excitement and tension.

GoblynByte said:

Indeed, and especially when compared to the "fuel tank of hit points" approach that most d20 games took, namely D&D 4e (which caused fights to really drag on) and to an extent Saga Edition (though the presence of the Condition Track helped mitigate that).

I got the chance to play in a (sadly) short-lived Babylon 5 campaign using the 2nd edition produced by Mongoose Publishing. And in most instances, if you try to stand out in the open, you are going to get dropped , a poignant lesson for the Narn Soldier/bodyguard PC that thought he could at least weather a few PPG blasts (GM had us build our characters at 6th level, and he had the most HP by far). There's a **** good reason why even the heroes of the TV series made use of cover and suppression fire in most fights.

Donovan Morningfire said:

Is this actually a problem these days?

Surely the most munchkin video gamer will know that the first thing you do in a shooter is stick to a chest high wall and start laying down fire? Ever since Gears of War there is an actual button to make you stick to the cover.

I mean, show any gamer a chest high wall and surely they will instinctively want to take cover behind it.

And games like Full Spectrum Warrior

(If just getting people to take cover was the goal, I would design the game around having a series of cover points set up on a board - you can only move between cover points. Shooting at someone in cover places suppression markers on them, so they cannot move or fire. Once a target is suppressed, you send a unit to flank them, and once flanking fire is achieved, you can eliminate said target.)

I forgot about using the percentile dice to represent d100! Thanks for the reminder!

GoblynByte said:

I've noticed that shift in my gaming group as well. Back in the day where we played Star Wars, being out-gunned and out-numbered was a regular thing. Sometimes you just had to retreat. Sometimes you got captured. Some of our best sessions started out with the players locked up in a detention cell thoroughly derailing the GMs plans.

Fast forward ten years of D&D 3e 'balanced encounters'. Running away? Unthinkable. Getting captured (or *gasp* surrendering )? Never! And if a fight is unwinable it's the GM being a jerk or just bad at balancing encounters. I've run a good deal of Dark Heresy "therapy sessions" in recent years, but there's a lot of damage to be undone. We're not quite there yet.

(And don't get me started on the "jedi should be better than everybody " nonsense.)

Slaunyeh said:

Well, unfortunately there's the movies (the highest level of Star Wars canon) pretty much saying that the Jedi (at least the ones that have been properly and fully trained at least) are better than everybody. The way that some EU writers tended to treat Luke as some nigh-omnipotent super-wizard didn't help either. I think the only EU writers that really did Post-RotE era Force-users justice were Timothy Zahn and Michale Stackpole (though his fondness for Corran Horn).

Faster reaction times, a useful array of psuedo-psychic powers, proficiency with a very dangerous weapon that is equally good for offense and defense… Luke Skywalker cleaning house on Jabba's goons in RotJ pretty well proved how dangerous a trained Jedi could be in comparison to "normal people." It was almost a reverse Godzilla effect, with the unstoppable rampaging monster being the hero instead of the villain. Han and Chewie on their best days would be hard-pressed to match that level of carnage without resorting to starship-scale weaponry.

The only person in that entire fight sequence that even slowed him down? Fandom-driven memetic bad-ass Boba Fett, and that was just for a few seconds (the lasso thingy probably had the Ensnare quality, and Luke was able to make the Hard Athletics check to slip free on his next turn) before getting knocked to the ground by a deflected shot from a blaster cannon.

While I do agree that it shouldn't be the case in the RPG that Jedi are simply "just better," at least not without having first spent a significant amount of character resources (XP in this system) to build up to being that powerful.