I've never paid much attention to Star Wars beyond the movies. Stormtroopers appear in all three of the original films, and with the exception of perhaps one scene, they seem to have horrible aim and go down when hit with any kind of attack. The lowly Ewoks take out dozens of them with clubs, bows & arrows and rocks.
Moreover, they're also rather stupid. While sweeping Mos Eisley for two droids, a squad of stormtroopers comes across a locked door and decide to move on. I guess they could not concieve of a world in which intelligent humanoid droids can lock a door?

As such, I think yeah, they should probably be pushovers in the RPG, at least if the game is supposed to mirror the films and not the EU stuff, or novels, comics etc.. I don't know whether George Lucas intended them to be the elite troops of the Galactic Empire, but if that was his intent he seems to have changed his mind while filming the scenes that included them, because they come across as hopelessly inept virtually every time we see them.

In fact, one of the lines that never fails to make me laugh in Episode IV is when Ben Kenobi says "…And these blast points… too accurate for sand people. Only imperial stormtroopers are so precise."

Clearly, he has not watched Episodes IV-VI

Plot made them poor aims even though George wished them to be good shots. Who were the Stormtroopers typcially shooting at? If they had been shown to have the precision Obi-wan spoke of, we would have had a dead Leia, Luke, Han, C3PO, R2D2, etc.

I always laughed at the notion of them moving on from the door also. I suppose the counter argument was (using modern legal terms) they did not have Probable Cause or a Search Warrant to enter the home so they just moved on. Somehow though I don't expect the Stormtroopers of the Empire operarting on a backwater planet would be worried about such issues that modern police deal with.

Sturn said:

THIS !

Keep in mind the epicness of the movies, unless u want to show heroes schrugging off docens of blastershots (or any kind of shot) all movies have to portrait enemies as bad shots … - the usual way to imagine it is simply that wounds (unlike crits) are caused by near-misses and only crits are actually hits …so when in the original movies none of the main characters are hardly hit - this is replicated in the system by them taking hits, but no crits …making them realize ouops maybe we should consider retreating …in this sense both strain and wounds can be looked upon as a kind of morale as well

Don't forget that Vader wanted the heroes to escape the death star but not make it look too easy so he could trace the ship back to Yavin.

So the stormies were not allowed to hit Han, Luke or Leia but had no trouble with those pesky Jawas.

Sturn said:

The wargame they did, which was kind of semi compatible with the roleplaying game, had general rebel troopers outclassing stormtroopers (and elite rebels outclassing elite stormtroopers). It was a general design choice, and truthfully it does reflect the treatment of the Empire in space, where they use disposable, relatively poor quality fighters against the well trained, motivated and equipped rebels. However, it just doesn't make much sense in my mind.

Personally, when I was looking at Saga, I had come to the conclusion that a stormtrooper should roughly equivalent to a level 5 character. I don't mind players blowing them away like leaves, as long as theyare a suitably "heroic" level of character, and level 5 just fit in my mind for this (most of the lead characters were in the mid teens in terms of character level, and in d20 a level 15 character will just chew through level 5 characters).

However, as someone mentioned, the whole handwaving of Stormtroopers' awfulness is hard to do when presented with the case of the ewoks. I loved the ewoks when I was a kid, but now they do just irk me, with their completely logic defying decimation of the stormtroopers. Even if Stormtrooper armour is really meant to be the plastic stuff they appear to be wearing it should provide some protection against flint tipped arrows at least. As far as the "blast points," we don't know that is actually referring to weapons fire (even though I presume that it was intended that way). It could be the points chosen for explosives in order to destroy the Sandcrawler, so maybe the Stormtroopers are awful shots, but are some of the galaxy's most skilled combat demolitions experts.

Sturn said:

Yep, totally. And I think that's appropriate for an RPG as well, assuming you want your PCs to be heroes like Luke, Han and Leia. In a game with a darker and more gritty tone, I'm amp up the Stormtroopers and make them more of a force (ahem) to be reckoned with.

I think each GM and player group should probably agree on a set of common expectations and then adjust the enemies to match that.

Venthrac said:

Well, in their defense, there were a few scenes in Episode IV where their poor aim was intentional. Remember, they let the heroes escape the death star so they could be tracked back to the rebel base….

borithan said:

Level 5 is what I made my basic Stormtrooper also. Coincidence? I had varying levels for Sergeants, Officers, etc. It's hard to recall now, but there was some sort of mechanic in SAGA on hit points that made PCs tougher (2 types of hit points). The Level 5 Stormtroopers were weaker in this advantage so could be downed more easily then a typical level 5 PC with the same gear.

Sturn said:

You're thinking RCR, the edition before Saga Edition was released. They had Vitality Point and Wound Points. Most NPCs just had Wound Points, making them easier to take down.

In Saga Edition, you just had hit points.