Am I misreading something, or are there only very limited stat options for combat in this game?

All the ranged skills require Agility, perhaps with some Brawn to handle heavier weapons.

All the melee/brawl stuff derives from Brawn.

Healing seems to come from Intelligence.

Couldn't there be some combat functionality that derives from the other stats, like Willpower or Cunning? Or maybe something like a low-level talent that allows you to replace one score with another

i.e. When using Vibroknives in combat, you may use your Cunning stat in place of your Brawn when making a combat roll.

I know not every character is going to be an expert damage-dealer, but I'm uncomfortable with the idea of having folks in the party who spend all of combat either finding hiding places or looking for plot devices rather than getting engaged in the battle.

Diplomacy said:

Then spend XP on skill ranks. Most races will default to 2 in brawn and agility, and it's pretty cheap to get 2 or so ranks in one combat skill, With a modicum of XP investment, you can be rolling 2Y or 2Y1G for your default combat roll.

If you want to be good in combat, you have to spend XP for it. If you want to be good at healing, spend the XP. In this game, you very much reap what you sow.

-EF

EldritchFire said:

There are plenty of things a character can do in combat that have nothing to do with fighting. Try to hot wire that landspeeder so the group can escape. Hack door controls so the group can get inside to safety. Rewire the security system so it fires on the bad guys. Disable communications so help can't arrive for the enemy. It's just a matter of giving them opportunities to participate rather than simply trying to put them on equal footing with combat-oriented characters when it comes to fighting.

You can run an entire session without a single combat encounter. None. At all. And the XP award is the same . :-)

Yeap… Brawn and Agility are the combative characteristics. Making an argument to use other characteristics for combat seems to stem from a desire to see "all characters be equally useful in combat". But this desire comes from the assumption that (like the past 2 Star Wars games) combat is "the focus" of sessions and encounters. Heck, you earned xp specifically by "defeating enemies". [shrug] But that's not the case any longer. :-)

So since combat is not the focal point, nor "the way" to earn XP… then the question of why I can't use Cunning or Intelligence for combat would then beg the question - why can't I use Agility on my Mechanics? Or Brawn on my Computer Use? ;-)

Diplomacy said:

I think you're absolutely correct, Diplomacy, the game has a fairly narrow spectrum of combat abilities. The situation is even worse when you look at vehicular combat, where almost everything is Agi based, except repairs.

Some solutions have been proposed, namely changing the rules to break the links between skills and attributes, or at least breaking away from old paradigms where every ranged attack is an Agi based challenge. I proposed a limited version of (making space piloting a cunning skill) and shouted down pretty hard, largely because it was different than what had been done before.

GM Chris makes an excellent point that you can run an entire session without a combat encounter, but misses the important half of the story. In these combat-free sessions, there are lots of places to use directly use Brawn and Agility skills (endurance checks, acrobatics, pick-pocketing, lifting, etc). To turn things around, there are very very few ways to use Cunning, Intellect, Presence, & Willpower in combat without really stretching the RAW.

The point is, if Brawn and Agility can be good in combat AND out of combat, why can't we change the rules so the other four attributes can be good in and out of combat as well.

-WJL

Just playing devil's advocate here:

Would you also argue that there are too few stats for social situations as well? Should the high Agility guy have things to do during the negotiation?

Diplomacy said:

I honestly think keeping Brawn and Agility as the combat scores makes the most sense. As GM Chris wisely noted, EotE isn't strictly about combat, and a good GM should be open to letting non-combat types provide a means to assist the party during combat scenes by way of other skills.

How about using Coerce, Charm, or Negotiate to get some of the bad guys to pull out of the fight? Works a hell of a lot faster than a blaster pistol in removing a group of minions as a possible threat, and they'd still count as "defeated" for the purposes of the encounter. I had a Twi'lek Explorer/Trader in one test session to exactly that, removing an entire minion group of 4 security troops from an encounter thanks to a stellar Charm roll on her part, and made the rest of the fight against a couple of Henchman a whole lot easier for the rest of the party. There's even a talent that lets a player make social attacks directly in combat, dealing up to 2 Strain on a good roll, which can do a number on a minion (since they don't get to apply any Soak against that damage, and lacking a Strain Threshold it goes straight to their wounds).

How about Perception to notice that part of a support beam looks rather weak, and that it wouldn't take much for someone to shoot out the beam and cause a chunk of ceiling debris to fall down on the bad guys?

During a chase scene, instead of just racing along, the ship's pilot uses a few fancy maneuvers to give a PC gunner a perfect shot at an enemy ship, providing a free upgrade to the gunner's attack roll in addition to the effects of any Advantages spent.

I think the issue is less a case of needing to broaden what Characteristics directly impact combat, and rather encouraging your players to get creative with using what skills they are good at in combat.

Also, there's already talents that let you use the "non-combat" Characteristics to add damage, making them useful in that target, all of which are mid to high tier talents.

Plus, as EldritchFire suggested, it's pretty easy to buy ranks in the combat skills, as for a lot of characters, once you get past 2 ranks in that skill, the base Characteristic isn't quite as important any more.

Doc, the Weasel,
Good point. Being the sort who tends to play combat-characters (I fall into the Real Man category with some very strong Real Roleplayer tendencies), I've had to take a back seat in social encounters quite often to let the party face take the lead. And I've been perfectly fine with that. After all, I firmly believe that not every character should automatically be awesome at every situation.

Doc, the Weasel said:

Doc, the Weasel said:

No, there are not too few stats for social situations, seeing as how you can directly use at least 3 statistics in such a scene:

1. Willpower (via Coerce)
2. Presence (via negotiate)
3. Cunning (via Deceit)
4. Intelligence (Knowledge skills, less direct, but still easy to apply)

Since there are very easily places for at least 3 attributes, and reasonably places for 4 of the 6 attributes, no I don't think there are "too few stats for social situations", because social situations are dictated by a broader variety of skills and attributes than combat situations.

Less directly, agility could be used to pickpocket something from the opponent, or use acrobatics and stealth to avoid the situation entirely. But the question itself that you posed is indicative of the fact there is a fundamental problem caused by agility/dexterity-centric game system design in the last 20+ years. "The high Agility guy", as you put it, has become so ubiquitous because of these unbalanced game designs that we have to worry about what he's doing during social encounters.

Again, looking back at what GM Chris said about running entire sessions without combat. If we're meant to be impressed that such a feat is possible (Not implying his statement was fueled by arrogance, far from it), it further underscores the problem. If playing a combat free session is so uncommon that even it's possibility/plausibility needs to be made explicit, then combat has to be viewed as a focus more than non-combat.

I think the essence of the concern stems from the observation that a majority of the game scenarios rely heavily on a minority of the game's attributes, while a minority of the game scenarios rely heavily on the excluded majority of the game attributes. This imbalance leads to frustrating cost-benefit results when translating character concepts in character sheets using the games rules.

The desire (at least, MY desire, I don't claim to speak for others) is to see a wider variety of attributes play larger rolls in combat. This is done by changing the rules to provide more combat applications for the skills in what I referred to as the "excluded majority" above.

-WJL

LethalDose said:

I'm onboard with LethalDose and WhiteFox… I think there needs to be a broader inclusion of characteristics in combat. Even if there are "universal talents" (aka feats not associated with a spec) that allow you to use cunning to fly a ship or slash with a knife… Or use willpower instead of brawn to calculate your soak… Or do more impactful actions with presence (al a the 4E warlord).

Starwars may be about being a senator or spy… but I'd wager the majority of us play to blow up some stormtroopers, fly an x-wing, or wield a lightsaber - and in that regard I'd say combat is at least 50% of the game, largely dominated by 33% of the characteristics.

This is an easy fix though. Either remap some skills, add some spec features or universal talents allowing for cross-pollination, or just break the skill-to-characteristic link entirely.

These types of discussions really highlight for me how different people want different things from an RPG and make me glad we have a forum to discuss them.

To a certain degree, I think allowing other characteristics to replace brawn and agility in combat hurts the game. It makes characters too similar. I want my character to be different than other people's characters at the table. I want my player who plays a Trando thug to feel like her choice to choose brawn and agility is rewarded when combat happens just like I want my player who plays a bothan information broker to feel rewarded for choosing cunning and intellect when gathering intel.

In the end, I want my players to play characters that play differently at the table. I want them to interact with the fiction in different ways. I don't want them to all be the same. If every character has a four in some ability and every character is allowed to use that ability in combat regardless of what the ability is, it starts to blur the lines too much for my taste. Others may disagree.

Also, as pointed out there are already talents that allow players to use other abilities in combat situations. Dealing damage is just one option in combat, other characteristics can be useful to generate different effects. Some examples:

• Anatomy Lesson: Add Intellect to damage
• Field Commander: Allows allies to take a free maneuver - Improved Field Commander is even better
• Inspiring Rhetoric: Allows allies to recover strain - Improved Inspiring Rhetoric grants allies boost die
• Scathing Tirade: Allows a PC to inflict strain, which for most enemies means wounds

However, more talents in future specializations might be a nice way to continue giving players options to use abilities other than brawn and agility in combat.

Furthermore, as pointed out already, encouraging players who aren't combat focused to interact with the environment with their skills encourages dynamic combat beyond "I stand up and fire at him and because I'm a doctor I use my intellect for my attack ability."

Finally, there is a difference between skills and characteristics. If a player is upset because she has a 2 in agility and so "isn't as good at combat" then encourage her to train her Ranged (Light) or whatever skill is applicable to the fighting style she wants to use. Everyone can train skills. Maybe it costs more for her to train that skill than it would someone else, but she was able to train other skills cheaper and can do other things that a combat oriented character may not be able to.

As I said, people will have different opinions. Maybe some GMs will make house rules to allow the use of other abilities in combat, but I think that should not be the core assumption.

For Exalted5 if you like the Warlord check out the Politico talent tree, some cool stuff in there.

Exalted5 said:

Why not go one step further, and just deep-six Characteristics/Ability Scores entirely? No Brawn, Agility, Willpower, Cunning, or any of them. All gone, all tossed into the trash bin?

That leaves Skills, and just Skills, not connected to any controlling attribute. That's pretty much how FATE operates, and it works pretty **** well, as it opens things up to let players dictate how their character does certain things. One player might use their Brawl skill to do a flying tackle into a bad guy while another might rely on misdirection and trickery to land a cheap-shot while a third player might channel Bruce Lee and go for rapid-fire fisticuffs.

There's been a lot of talk about how Skills and their providing of Proficiency dice are far less useful than rolling lots of Ability Dice, so simply have dice rolls be one Proficiency Die and then a number of Ability dice equal to your skill rank. The cap of 2 Ranks in Skills would either have to go entirely or be raised (perhaps a cap of 4 ranks instead).

Dedication could instead be re-worded to instead provide one extra Proficiency die when making a specific skill roll, but that's fairly simple and it cuts down on the drive to simply plow through a talent tree as quickly as possible just to get the Dedication talent.

Soak Value, Wound Threshold, and Strain Threshold would need some tweaking as well since there'd no longer be a Characteristic to tie them to. Perhaps borrow a page from FATE and have them tied to a Skill, with the Skill's rank halved before adding it in?

After all, if you're going to reinvent the wheel, why stick with the same basic design that's already in place?

cparadis said:

I want to discuss the examples of talents that you gave. Those are a good start, but they still are very limited and require a fair deal of investment. The other issue is that those talents are the exception and not the rule. Several of the specializations have no current way of contributing much in combat (without GM fiat), and I feel that if you are going to have talents then why shouldn't they be used to help out those classes with less in-combat viability?

My specific issues are the following:

• Anatomy Lesson: Requires a Destiny point to add Intellect to 1 roll, an extremely high cost for that effect.
• Takes an action to essentially shuffle your allies, useful but will probably get tedious/ineffective after much use. Also requires that your allies take strain damage (the talent is also only found on the Mercenary Soldier tree, a combat oriented specialization).
• Inspiring Rhetoric: This is interesting, but still has the problem of only having one option for the character, I fear that a character who relies upon this might feel a lot like a healbot. It is a good step though, and I like that it starts out fairly easy to get into, only requiring more investment for the more useful versions. I haven't seen this put to much use, but I feel that simply regaining 1 strain on 1 ally (having to spend adv. to recover more) is somewhat underwhelming as an option. They still are only indirectly helping combat, keeping strain in check but not having much effect beyond that.
• Scathing Tirade: Similar to the above, but I feel even more that dealing 1 strain (on a harder check) isn't that useful, is one wound on one opponent that potent? Most characters could just shoot someone and deal more damage. Note also that this and inspiring Rhetoric are apart of the same tree, so other specializations won't have access to them.

Like I said, a good start, but what about the other specs that need some help in the combat department.

P.S. The primary point of the Warlord is that he can both combat opponents effectively on the front-lines and help his allies. The Politico won't last long on the front lines, (at least not just by his talents).

Donovan Morningfire said:

Since when do skills add Proficiency dice? Last I checked, the larger of the two (Characteristic and Skill) provides the Ability dice. The smaller of the two provides the number of upgrades. So, someone with 5 Brawn and 1 Melee rolls the same pool as someone with 1 Brawn and 5 Melee. So, raising the skill does add more dice.

Oh, and you're wrong about Proficiency vs Ability. Rolling 2 dice is better than one (regardless of type), but rolling a number of Proficiency dice is better than rolling an equal number of Ability dice.

Kallabecca said:

I found Donovan Morningfire's post there confusing, until I read the last sentence. What had been suggested earlier by Exalted5 was a re-invention, not a fix. So it seems Dono is addressing that more than he is the fine points of the dice pool mechanics.

Regardless, I can see his point and don't need to get too quibbly: When you start the game, you can raise your Characteristics a lot higher than you can raise your skill ranks. And there has indeed been much talk about how Skill ranks upgrading dice are less useful than providing MORE dice via having a higher Characteristic rating. For higher levels of play, that concern goes away, but it's there nonetheless during, and for a while after, character creation.

Also, I don't see where he posted about Proficiency vs. Ability. You said, "you're wrong," but I can't find his or anyone else's post that talks about Proficiency vs. Ability dice.

GM Chris said:

Like

cparadis said:

I'm not proposing we allow characters to swap out attributes to replace basic game concepts, like Brawn determining soak (at least for physical damage). You're right, letting players use whatever attribute they wanted for skill checks would homogenize the game way too much.

However, I think you're failing to see that characters are already encouraged into homogenized play choices because of the minority attributes/majority scenarios, summarized above. By providing a combat options that pull from a robust set of attributes, instead of a restricted set as is the current situation, you can encourage a wider variety of play styles, and avoid making the characters "too similar". Agility based characters could rely on their speed to maintain a safe distances between them and opponents, cunning-centric characters could rely on ambushes and dirty tricks, etc.

@Morningfire

We aren't trying to reinvent the wheel, we're trying to improve how it works, like adding ball bearings to it's axle. Jumping from a proposal to break the links between skils and attributes to ditching the entire attribute system, is a bit… hyperbolic? While an attributeless system may work in Fate, I'd want to avoid it here. EotE has this clever, unique, and potentially beautiful mechanic of dice pool construction that fundamentally relies on the interplay of attribute and skill. Getting rid of attributes destroys that. Your proposed solution… Well I'll be nice and just say its simplisitc & lacks imagination, and leave it there.

@awayputurwpn

On the dice mechanics:

Donovan Morningfire said:

Now, there may be other posts or data sources that I'm unaware of, but I suspect the source of this idea is from my thread here . The issues I've posted about and provided examples of in regards to the dice mechanics aren't directly linked to skills and attributes. In short, increasing skill ranks is more effective than increasing attributes (in terms of improving success probability and advantages produced) when Skill rank exceeds Attrib. This is because increasing skill ranks in this scenario adds ability dice instead of changing ability dice to proficiency dice. In other scenarios, e.g. Attrib exceeds skill, there's reduced benefit.

It's not that Proficiency dice aren't useful; they are better than ability dice. It's just that adding a proficiency die and removing an ability die from any base dice pool has less benefit than simply adding an ability die. It might seem like a nit-picky point, but it has important. I can't say if the confusion in the post above was caused by the poster fundamentally failing to understand what was presented, or being unable to articulate the difference. Or maybe they didn't actually read the post the information came from. I've been told that could be a problem…

-WJL

awayputurwpn said:

HA! Nice.

@GM Chris

But seriously, If there are situations where a different attribute would be appropriate to use with a skill, it should be allowed. Why can't you use Agility on your mechanics check? Well, why would the situation call for using agility? If its a situation that makes sense, then it should be allowed.

In the current Beta RAW, we're making hull repairs using f***ing athletics ! Wouldn't it make more sense to use mechanics with brawn as the attribute.

-WJL

I'm glad there are people so passionate about this!

I am on the side of wanting everyone in my party to have a traditional combat role regardless of what stat they focused on, if they so choose to pursue that route. I got to thinking if there was a real-world equivalent… and I think there might be.

Think of all the community colleges and retraining schools that take people whose innate abilities and skills might not be applicable for the skills they want them to learn, but they give the tools necessary to those persons to excel in a field should they decide to.

So another thought started boiling:

Uncle Watto's Reformed Gambler's Desert Survival Community College

Don't gamble with your life. Use your Credits to take our credits.

The following Talents may be taken independent of career or specialization.

Monetary Costs:

300 Credits and 10 XP for the first course

200 Credits and 10 XP for any additional course

Catalog Sampling:

Emergency First Aid

Sometimes a confident voice and a good bedside manner is all you need to hide the fact that you didn't make it into medical school.

You may replace your Intellect score with your Presence score when making Medicine skill checks. Add [black Cube] to the check.

Bonus Certification : For +10 additional experience and 100 Credits, Medicine may now be considered a Career skill.

Mos Eisley Kwan Do

The ancient art of being a no-good backstabber.

You may replace your Agility score with you Cunning score when making Melee checks.

Limitation: You may only use a single melee weapon with an encumbrance of 1 or less for your combat check.

Bonus Certification: For +10 additional experience and 100 Credits, Melee may now be considered a Career skill.

Targetting Computer Configuration and Programming

Only an idiot would turn off a perfectly good computer.

You may replace your Agility score with your Intellect score when making Gunnery checks.

Limitation: You must be using a weapon either on a starship or assault vehicle with an operational form of computer-assisted targeting.

Bonus Certification: For +10 additional experience and 100 Credits, Gunnery may now be considered a Career skill.

If you created a character with absolutly no combat skills. That is who you are. C3P0 doesnt have any ability to use a gun or weild a blade, so he doesn't. He generally gets out of the way. You may consider that boring, but thats how the character was made. However as some of the others have suggested, you have the ability to do more than just shoot in a combat.

Take our little overpowered freind R2D2. During combat he spends most of his time altering systems or hacking things for the groups benifit. That little droid helps out much more than an extra blaster ever could.

The same goes in reverse. If you create a character who is combat heavy but not really social, take Chewie for example. Then he spends his non combat time fixing the shipdroidetc or doing other things that fit his talents and lets the social characters do their thing.

My suggestion here is not to create a jack of all trades, master of none, but to pick a few areas your character is uesfull in, and go to town on them. The way this system is written you can build whatever you want.

The character I am currently rolling has a brawn of 4, cunning 3, agility of 2 and the rest are ones (yay droid) He tends away from the social situations, but spends that time either picking pockets while the negotiations cause distractions or just sitting there like a good little droid. Everyone gets their turn in the sun.

This is a roleplaying game. You create your role, and then you play it.

LethalDose said:

Based on my experience, which obviously is going to differ from everyone else's, I disagree. I have seen no actual evidence of this in any of the beta sessions I've run (where my player's characters were very diverse), nor have I seen anyone else here who says their players are all playing homogenized characters - though maybe that has been your experience. I also disagree with your premise that a minority of attributes interact with a majority of scenarios, but that could just be my play style and the play style of my players. Our sessions tend to have much less combat than roleplay and exploration.

If you read the session report of my first game (which strangely devolved into a weird discussion of whether there should be specific or general weapons … wtf?) you'll see that I allowed my player to use deceit to stress out opponents in combat. His sleezy information broker played very differently. He didn't try to pull a gun on his enemies he tried to trick them into surrendering. Likewise, our slicer didn't try to bash someone's head in, he tried to slice into the security system to activate some defenses. If they were just as good at shooting opponents as our sniper, two things would happen. First, our combat would be more boring where everyone is just standing around shooting everyone. Second, our sniper would feel like his choices were being rendered worthless. She would then be right to question why she can't use her agility to gather information if someone else can use their cunning to stab someone with a knife. Like I said, this leads to the players playing too similarly.

Player character sheets are the best way players tell the GM how awesome their character is and what they want to do. Sure if every player rolls up combat-oriented characters the GM knows she needs to throw lots of combat at the players. But if the players create a diverse set of characters, it gives the GM more to work with and makes it easier to present the PCs with a wide variety of options.

Like I said, my experience will differ from other people's but I think it is nice to have a place to share ideas.

LethalDose said:

My comment wasn't (entirely) intended to be flippant. :-) There ARE systems where you can tie ANY "characteristic" to a skill check, as long as you justify why and how . So that may be possible, here…

But… (just my opinion), having played those systems, they get tough for new players, especially. It's a lot of RPing/creative chops that are needed. Add that into the creative burden (so sad that it's a "burden" for so many players) of interpreting the narrative dice… and I think the system would get far too in the weeds of interpretation. [shrug] But I could be wrong.

May be getting a little sidetracked here, but when I run a game if the character wants to use a characteristic that's relevant to the task that isn't the skill's linked characteristic (and they can explain how it comes into play) I will usually give them a boost die or two.

So in play testing edge, (as well as in my gaming experience) I have found it enjoyable to have a split role between players. Too many games don't offer roles that are non-combat related. It is nice to see a game where combat doesn't have to be #1, and players can create characters that can accomplish things without combat.

I also like it because it does allow for creative ways of approaching things and gives a more full narrative when there is a mix of skills within the party. Now, I will say it puts more of an onus on the GM and the players to understand what they are doing when creating characters and campaigns because of these split task characters. GMs need to be more mindful that combat shouldn't require everyone to take up a blaster to be relevant, and players need to understand that if they create a doctor/computer genius they need to focus on their strengths and won't be the sure shot commando as well.

The nice thing is that if everyone communicates during character creation, you can choose a proper method of play. This allows for campaigns that are all about combat and GMs that don't want to think up other ways for non-combat characters to participate. Conversely you can do non-combat campaign or anything in between. I like this flexibility. But as said before, you need to look at your characters roll and understand that your character can do something in most situations, you just may not be the focus of every situation. Taking cues from the movies is a great way to see how all the different archetypes interactin different situations. Not everyone was a crack shot with a blaster, not everyone could be smooth when talking to others, and no one seemed adept at fixing anything for more than a couple of minutes of use.

During character creation, make sure to create a character that has abilities that mirror what you would like to play. Visualize what you see your character doing in different situations. Communicate with the other players at the table and especially the GM. Talk about how you see your role evolving during play. If you are a doctor, what can you do during combat? Will it limit you too much? Does the GM have a plan to help you be useful and feel more included in the game play? All of these issues can be overcome with some forethought and planning, and it brings a richer, fuller game play to the table if there is an eclectic mix of characters.

I for one don't want to see more mingling. I think there is a mechanic that allows for even a non-combat person to do combat damage. Remember having an attribute at 1, and a skill at 4, is just as effective as having the attribute at 4 and the skill at 1.

Concluding, I don't think there is a problem with the game system forcing most combat traits into two main attributes, because of the options available and the fact that the game play can be tailored by the GM to fit the players focus.