gribble said:

This pretty much says it. It's one thing to sit back and tell people "Oh yeah, you just need to get used to it", but another to do that in the face of play experience where players and GMs have said "This is a problem".

If you haven't played the game (And I'm not saying you haven't, I don't know), then it's very difficult to have a feel for how the game plays, and therefore it is difficult to make informed judgments, either quantitative or qualitative, about these issues. For example, a lot of posters here have gotten up my ass for wanting to change the dice because of the the math I've produced to illustrate the problems I see with mechanics. However, they skip over reading the following fact:

I did the math in response to seeing problems at the game table!

Players were missing a lot more than we felt they "should" given their attributes and skills, even on simple tasks. We kept getting "weird" results from dice rolls. I did not go looking for theoretical problems with the dice math, I found real, tangible, empirical problems with the dice and set out to understand why it was happening to better understand how to fix it. Unfortunately, because of what the math says, I don't think there is a way to fix it appropriately without redesigning them.

As far as your comment about the devs "caving to pressure" on the Spec limit, there were real design issues that necessitated a change in how specs worked. In short, there were some major meta-gaming issues and very awkward record keeping that would have occurred if they hadn't changed the rules. I don't think they made the best choice, but I do think they eventually made a good choice that fixed it.

Anyway, the real points here are:

1. Please play the game before you comment on the design. Preferably, play for upwards of 8 hrs, then re-read the book, cover to cover, THEN play for another 12-16 hrs so you can really see what the devs are trying to do.
2. When you see a problem, either with RAW, patch notes, or recommended fixes, please post facts and examples instead of "I feel its fine like this", or "I don't like that I can't that I can't do this". Show us instead why it is or isn't okay.

alright </Soapbox> enough of that crap.

-WJL

gribble said:

How about disarming the target, or providing yourself a +1 bonus to ranged defense? Both of those are three advantage, and neither one requires you to successfully hit the target.

Also, don't be afraid to get creative, either as the GM or the player, or to allow things normally outside the pre-set list of suggested options.

The groups I've played in had very little trouble figuring out how to assign any excess Advantages, hit or miss, after the initial combat session, doing things like multiple boost dice or multiple setback dice, as neither of those options say you're limited to only applying one die per target. Had one combat encounter (fourth combat for the group as a whole) where a player rolled 6 Advantages, then spent them for +1 ranged defense (she did not want to get shot), and then a boost die for the next two PCs to act, all of which took her less than 10 seconds to figure out how to spend them. In an earlier combat, one PC spent his 4 Advantage to provide the bounty hunter PC a total of 4 boost dice, which enabled her to score one doozy of a critical hit on the enemy bounty hunter that was sniping at them, and it only took him a few seconds to figure out how to spend those Advantages, even though he did manage a basic success with his light blaster pistol (figuring she'd do more damage with her heavy blaster pistol than he could manage even with a possible critical hit).

gribble said:

Hmm. In the games I've run - it hasn't been an issue. Maybe I've got an abundance of creative players. They also took to the system like fish to water.

This is also mitigated by the fact that a combat encounter is generally FAST. Unlike a d20 system, where it can slog on for 10 rounds - most foes are DOWN in one or two hits.

GM Chris said:

This. Oh so very much this. Having played an EotE game on a Friday night and then a Saga Edition game the following Sunday, the difference was night and day. We managed to get a whole lot done in EotE in only a few hours, with an extended combat that took about a third of the session, with only one PC (mine) being specifically geared for combat, while the Saga Edition game was a single combat that took over 2/3rds of the session to resolve, and we're 6th level characters, all but one of whom are pretty combat-capable.

Donovan Morningfire said:

Both of these options were used, then generally bypassed in favour of other options. Adding +3 [boost] to the next PCs attack (or better yet, spreading it around) was generally considered better by the players, and spending the time to consider and allocate those slowed things down.

We did have some "creative" uses of advantage as well, but it's hard to be doing that continuously for a long fight…

gribble said:

How do you bypass disarming a target? One PbP I'm playing in saw an NPC disarmed, given a weapon by his ally, and then disarmed again all in the same combat round. It was great!

What it really comes down to for me is evolving the scene as the game goes on. Add details as the players uncover new things about it (which is actually hard written as spending Advantage to notice something important about the scene). Use the Advantage to encourage them and give them hints about ways they could further spend them should they start dragging their feet a little bit.

Just my two creds.

GM Chris said:

GM Chris said:

This wasn't our experience at all.

SPOILERS

The encounter at TechTank from Crates of Krayts took us an entire 2-3 hour session, as bad as or worse than any Saga encounter I've ever had (and I ran the entirety of the lvl 1-20 campaign that WotC published online). Now admittedly some of that was that the player's weren't intimately familiar with the rules, and some of it was that I was applying errata to the stat blocks on the fly. A lot of it however was down to lots of failed rolls, and worse lots of failed rolls that generated a lot of advantages, and the corresponding time taken to look through the options of what to spend it on (after a lot of: Can I generate a hit with my offhand weapon? No. Well then can I score a critical hit? No. Etc.). Even more of it was down to generating a lot of 6-8 damage hits (vibroknives and heavy blaster pistols) against bounty hunters with 4-5 soak. I.e.: usually both enemies and PCs were generating 2-3 damage on a single hit, meaning 4-5 hits to drop the average opponent.

Now it was fun, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves overall, but it certainly wasn't fast. Looking at the Adversaries section of the book, the average soak seems to be in the 4-5 range, which would likely also be the case for most PCs (at least most that are combat tuned), meaning that anything lighter than rifles and vibroswords is going to be in the same boat of scoring 2-3 damage per hit on average… so down in one or two hits (unless we're talking optimised combat monsters) seems unlikely.

UNLESS you properly utilize Advantage and Disadvantage to wear them down first! Not to beat a dead horse, but a missed shot with a few advantage can really set up a single great hit with 4+ Boost dice to score either a load of extra Successes or a Critical Hit's worth of Advantage. The mechanics really encourage (or are at least meant to encourage) teamwork, and if you work as a team you can really set up a shot that negates any Soak. Take your shot at the guy that just generated two or three disadvantage, and next thing you know they guy is wide open and waiting for a boosted/aimed shot to the noggin.

gribble said:

I don't know if it's explicit, but you shouldn't be able to activate any use of advantage from the combat options more than once unless it explicitly allows it (e.g. recover strain).

LethalDose said:

My play experience, I find that the "dice math" is fine. What you call "weird" results, I call interpreting the scene. This is probably due to how each of our brains interpret things. You seem very rooted toward hard data, empirical evidence and such and seem to have a very science/mechanical mind leading me to think that you work in a similar field. I'm different. I have an arts background (theatre for example), so much of how I think is in terms of emotional response. How I interpret the dice is similar to improv theatre. In inmprov, one person will say or do something, and another person has to take that and expand on it. There's no saying "that's not how it works" or "here's how it should be". It is very much going with the flow. When I play, this is the mindset I have when reading the dice - I try to make a story out of each roll. Success and Failures, advantages and threats and so on. This is why I don't see the issue as you do. You also said:

"I don't know if it's explicit, but you shouldn't be able to activate any use of advantage from the combat options more than once unless it explicitly allows it (e.g. recover strain)."

Now, this could be the case that you can only do each thing once, but I've run with using stuff more than once. Misses that give lots of advantage, which is in turn spent to give the next guy huge boost dice pools to the attack. It makes it so every character could possibly do something cool by reading the dice and giving out bonuses to other players. I have a growing dislike for d20 games, or any game that is strictly hit or miss for that matter, as I roll really poorly on d20's. I mean, statistically it should be impossible to roll that badly. So much of combat is me missing. Waiting for my next turn to miss, and so on. THIS system, lets me do more. I may still miss, but if I get advantage, I can do something cool, unexpected, or even useful to a situation.

All in all, you and I think differently. This is not a bad thing. As long as we're civil, we can agree to disagree. After all:

"The world doesn't move to the beat of just one drum. What might be right for you, may not be right for some. It don't matter that you got not a lot. So what, They'll have theirs, and you'll have yours, and I'll have mine. And together we'll be fine… because it takes diff'rent strokes to rule the world."

Now, as to my comment of "devs caving to pressure". Well, I really liked the idea as presented in published material. Was it perfect? No. Did it add to bookkeeping? Yes it did. But the idea was very solid in my opinion. It created, in my eyes, a multitude of choices to a player in terms of character. Choices that would come with repercussions. Do I choose to give up everything I've known to become a Jedi? Or do I stay along the path I'm on? I saw the limit, not as a bad thing, but as something that could lead to the depth and growth of a character. Now, the book keeping was mainly from trying to remember where this or that talent came from, did I purchase it here? etc. I admit this was a nightmare. The idea was great, but the implementation was lackluster. The "caving to pressure" came about that the devs realized they needed to fix something, so rather than do a lengthy redesign of the class/tree systems (which would be needed), they choose an easy fix. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I understand completely why they chose it. I feel (I know you hate that word ) that they could have done something amazing with the career/specialty structure. But, they did the fix that was needed. Does the game work better with the fix? Yes it does. Could it have been done a different way? Yes it could, but the cost would have been higher, as it was a huge undertaking - not something for a game that is slated to coming out as soon as possible. At the very least, I hope that FFG thinks on how to improve the career/specialty system for whatever RPG comes after Star Wars. I know I'm working on my own projects with this system.

gribble said:

However, a small fight is usually over in 3/4 rounds (last WFRP fight I was in the "bard" character got three actions off and nevber actually moved from his starting spot, as he ran out of time to actually hit anything). Even larger ones don't take that long. Maybe is it just your bad luck with the rolling? Or is the lack of action cards slowing things down (as you need to look all the advantage stuff up, rather than just read it off your card)?

Something that does amuse me slightly is they have returned to AD&D suggestion that a turn is about a minute… How many Star Wars fire fights even last a minute, let alone several? With a good blaster you could cause untold devastation in a minute. Obviously just fixable by saying a turn represents something much less (or leave it totally unsaid, like in WFRP).