That is what I'm thinking too. Add challenge and increase adv cost. It is easier than adding a reduced auto-fire damage mechanic - although I can see that being a good idea too - except it might not make sense. Unless you could agree that the repaid energy cycling does decrease the power in each blaster bolt… it adds math though (or auto-fire setting could get a number after it, similar to stun grenades - which becomes the auto-fire damage). That way you could easily keep it at 1 advantage, add challenge die and say as a default that auto-fire decreases the based damage by 4 or 3 or something. Heavy blaster rifle could have auto-fire 6 or 7 - so it still packs a punch, but not nearly as bad.

Although I am more keen on the increased advantage cost and challenge die addition.

First I want to say I haven't had a true playtest of Autofire but I really don't understand the huge disrurbance in the force its causing. Just goofing around with the dice app and taking an average player who doesnt have a high brawn, adding diff for cumbersome and other modifiers it took me several tries to even net one advantage. The time it takes to set up allows player reaction to possibly take down the gunner or get away from the frakking thing. I know this is a rpg and there needs to be balance in a lot of its components but it does seem to be striving for some sense of realism. Look at today's military grade weaponry, most will kill a soldier in one shot. Just my two cents I will now go back to quietly lurking around the boards.

I can see Autofire being realistically deadly to be a fair arguement. But you can also argue that storm trooper do not have weapons that are capable of autofire. The only content that says a storm trooper rifle can do that is in the Dark Forces video game and that's only when Katarn gets ahold of one. Maybe Storm Trooper training denies them the use of such a feature because of the added difficult and use of ammo.

Zar said:

Regular Stormies have regular blaster rifles, but the "Imperial Stormtrooper Sergeant" henchmen described in the book is rocking an HBR (also explicitly mentions AF in its description). These don't seem very uncommon.

It's not so much a concern about these being held by minions (which is terrifying), it's about the not infrequent henchmen that suddenly becomes a death machine.

-WJL

Again, playing developer's advocate here. Has there been a rash of PC deaths related to the "unnerfed" Autofire rules in actual gaming situations? Just asking.

mwodom said:

It wasn't a "rash" because I changed the rule in my games. During the final scene in Crates of Krayts, 2 players went from 0 damage/0 crits to incapacitated and 1 or 2 critical injuries on subsequent rounds from AF attacks. After that, the [now injured] soldier picked his HBR back up and iced Tol Cordol in a single burst.

When we realized what could have happened with better rolls (the rolls that produced the results above weren't really impressive), it was pretty clear to us that, at least in our games, the RAW for made the game practically unplayable if those weapons were used.

Seriously, I think roll that took down the character that wasn't a solider had a net result of 2 successes and 1 adv. The first hit hurt, the second one (bought for one adv) exceeded this threshold and caused a crit.

Neither the players nor the GM (me) thought it was "fun". Hence the change, which has worked out fine on our subsequent games.

-WJL

Okay, I'm asking because I'm genuinely curious not trying to be critical or start anything. In your example was the gun mounted on a tripod? You said he picked the gun back up an iced on of the characters. Was this in the same round? The description in the book states that it typically takes two rounds for a two man team or three rounds for a one man team to bring the weapon to bear.

@Mwodom

I believe what LethalDose said in his play example was an HBR (Heavy Blaster Rifle) and not what you are thinking, which is the Heavy Repeating Blaster. The HBR is very usable one man and fully capable of autofire. My group recently found out the truth of this in the last play test we did … As is, it seems a bit tasty, least in my opinion .

M.

My mistake. Had a dyslexic moment. I still believe these weapons should be considered extremely deadly and need to be feared by the players. I guess we will just have to see what the devs think in the final update or possibly the finished product.

Marachai5 said:

This is correct. I was abbreviating "Heavy Blaster Rifle" as HBR.

I think the light repeater bears mention, here, as well. In the EotE book, they are described as "tripod-mounted support weapons for military and mercenary units." Light repeaters have previously been presented but personal (and scary as hell) weapons, and this is the first time I have seen them described as "tripod-mounted" in any star wars game (RPG or otherwise). These repeaters are also very accessible in this system because of their large HP total and the weapon sling mod.

My point being: The HBR does not represent a peculiarity where the AF mechanic will be seen and be problematic, but instead represents the less severe of the two options that, I suspect, will be frequently seen in PC groups, and are reasonable load-outs for some henchmen and nemeses.

-WJL

Concerning the Autofire issue. I'm actually torn. I do like the idea of the rather than the difficulty being increased, a die is upgraded to a challenge die. At the same time, if an enemy is carrying an auto-fire weapon, the perhaps the characters should simply not fight them. They might consider sneaking around or running away.

Now, I know that flies right in the face of most players, but this is something that bothers me with a lot of games. The notion that if an enemy is there, they're meant to be fought. There's no shame in running. Han Solo ran (or at least flew the Millennium Falcon away from a Star Destroyer). Not every problem can be solved by a judicious use of brute force. If the PC's have a weapon and use it the enemies they face should logically learn and adapt. A good example of this is this man.

http://www.badassoftheweek.com/hayha.html

This man had artillery strikes called in, in an attempt to kill him. Spoiler: It didn't work.

The point is, there are somethings that are really tough, even outright devastating and will get you killed. Perhaps we as gamers have to learn that there are things we can't face head on, and we should try to use what nature gave us: the ability to think (well most of us were given that gift anyway… well.. maybe just some of us ).

I understand why people feel that the rules are 'broken', but it may be our thought processes of needing to defeat everything thrown at us that is broken. Defeat doesn't necessarily mean kill. GM's when you're running a game and the Player's start firing autofire weapons. Have the enemies surrender. For the most part, people don't want to die. Have this happen a bit till the players are comfortable. That's when you attack them with a sniper. I know who you should base that sniper on by the way.

As to a sniper, I know a lot of people are upset at the assassin's loss of deadly accuracy. I have a feeling that that particular talent is going to show up in a solder class Sniper specialization in Star Wars: Age of Rebellion.

LethalDose said:

In the WEG miniatures rules, there are Repeating Blasters, Medium Repeating Blasters and Heavy Repeating Blasters. Repeating Blasters have two configurations - 'standard' where they are carried by one man and used a slightly heavier blaster rifle, and 'tripod mounted' where they get to use the 'following fire' rule, and if they hit they can take another shot with a -2 modifier (then if they hit with that another at -4 etc.).

I liked to think they looked a bit like .30 cal machine guns.

That Blasted Samophlange said:

I [nearly] completely agree with you, TBS. I don't think combat should always be the 'best solution', and sometimes, it should be a downright poor choice. This is similar to a point brought up several weeks ago when a lot of players felt that combat was "too lethal", and since combat had to be such an integral part of any Star Wars, the dev's needed to whip out the nerf bat and beat down all those nasty weapons so PC's could wade through their foes and feel good about themselves. Thankfully, the initiative seems to have lost momentum. I really think the game is just lethal enough to as it is, because it always keeps players nervous when they go into combat, and sometimes makes them avoid a fight, which allows for some really interesting story telling. There's actually tons of instances in the OT where the characters try really hard to avoid combat, so I think this is very 'star warsy'.

I want my players to see an imperial line with a fortified E-WEB (e.g. machine gun nest) and nearly crap themselves at the thought of having to assault the position, directly or otherwise. However, I would also like to be able to have encounters where the players are supposed to fight and have a henchman with an autofire weapon. That is difficult to do under the current RAW. Increasing the cost of activating the ability helps moderate the weapon quality so the players won't avoid combat every time there's an AF weapon present, but will typically try to check first.

Basically, I want them afraid of the GUN. Not afraid of the MECHANIC.

Short version: I really really like how lethal the combat is now. The AF rules just take it too far.

I also like the idea of difficulty upgrades as part of the mechanism for multiple hits. Actually, I like it for ALL the systems (Two-weapon, linked, etc).

-WJL

I'm with LethalDose on this. The overall feeling of combat danger seems to be about right, and there's nothing wrong with auto-fire cranking that up a notch (or two), but the current rules don't really seem to do that. Instead, they crank it up so far that, in a galaxy where Stormtroopers exist in large numbers, no force should be able to stand up to them. A good roll will drop a PC in one shot. A *very* good roll will drop 2-3.

Lethal prefers doubling the advantage cost to trigger an additional hit. I prefer the single advantage allowing the conversion of an additional success into an additional hit (and think that could work just as well for the other multiple-hit mechanics). In practice, the two methods seem to have a similar effect on limiting the number of hits to something that seems really dangerous, but just *might* be survivable. Lethal's method is more likely to result in extra Successes to make one of the hits really good. Mine is more likely to result in spare Advantages that can trigger other effects.

As a side note, I find it strange that standard Stormtroopers are equipped with a blaster rifle given that, in the movies, they are quite obviously equipped with carbines. I find it even more odd since the only difference between the blaster rifle and blaster carbine seems to be that the carbine is 1 Encumbrance 'lighter', and has Medium rather than Long range. (And it's 50 credits cheaper.)

ErikB said:

I've pictured the .30 cal's like that as a medium repeaters (not listed in the EotE beta) in the Star Wars Universe. I see Light repeaters as LMGs , like the M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle . Mean to be handled by a single soldier, but able of laying down pretty fearsome firepower. The heavy repeaters are real nasty weapons, like the .50 cal M2 .

Similarly, I see Blaster rifles to be like M1 Garands and M16A2, Semi-automatic and pack a punch, and Heavy Blaster Rifles as AK-47s, or other fire select "Battle rifles".

I separate out the M16A2 from the AK because the former chambers the smaller 5.56mm round and is typically not fully automatic (fires 3-round bursts) and the latter chambers the heavier 7.62 round and typically can be fired in full auto.

Probably too much thought there…

-WJL

LethalDose said:

It's possible that the FFG actually considers the Heavy Blaster Rifle to be what you consider a Light Repeating Blaster, and a Light Repeating Blaster to be what you consider a Medium Repeating Blaster. Adding some in-universe samples of what constitutes each class to the final book will probably help clear that up.

Voice said:

Yep, that's totally possible. I went back to the WEG 2nd ed book ('cause that's where I learned what's what). The light repeater they list in there is the BlasTec T21. The WEG book doesn't have HBRs ( I don't think they showed up until Saga ed, which doesn't provide a model designation). Wookiepedia lists the BlasTec RT-91C as an HBR, though, which is much smaller than the T21 (closer to a modern assault rifle).

-WJL

Voice said:

I actually prefer neither solution, but rather something that was bandied around in a few posts in (I think) the Combat forum, whereby the [adv] cost increased according to the total number of targets hit. It was a little more complicated (though I'd argue no more than converting successes to additional hits), but it kept autofire lethal against groups, but not so good against single targets. I think that's the sweet spot we should be looking for rather than toning it down in every situation.

Stupid not being able to edit posts <grumble, grumble>..

I found the rule I was thinking of:

"the advantage cost to gain each hit on a target is equal to the total number of times they will have been hit by this attack."

I.e.: first hit on original target is free (it's the hit from the successful attack). To purchase a second hit on the original target would cost 2 adv because he is now being hit a total of two times. To purchase a third hit on the original target would cost an additional 3 adv (for a total of 5), because he is now being hit three times. To hit additional target(s), it costs 1 adv each, as each is now being hit by the attack for the first time. Choosing to hit one of them a second time would cost another 2 adv (for a total of three), as that target would have now been hit twice by the attack.

As an example, I'm shooting a group of three enemies with an autofire capable weapon. I roll 2 nett successes and 3 nett advantage. I hit the initial target with my successful attack, I then spend 2 [adv] to score an extra hit on the initial target, leaving me with 1 [adv] to also score a hit on one of the other two targets. Alternatively, I could buy one hit on each of the two additional targets for 1 [adv] each - so I hit all three targets once - leaving me with 1 spare [adv] which I can't use to purchase additional hits (it would now cost 2 more [adv] to hit any of the three targets who have been hit once by the attack), but can spend on other effects. Finally, I could instead choose to hit the initial target once (the initial hit) and spend 3 [adv] to score the first (1 [adv]) and second (2 [adv]) hit on one of the other targets.

LethalDose said:

Why did you have to say it in caps? Now you've made me remember the existence of The Roleplay Game That Should Not Be Named!