Hello all.

So far I am really liking this system, but I wanted to run an idea by the comunity.

Basicaly, I really like the feeling that I am activly defening myself, and not mearly the victim of circumstance.

The simplest way to handle this is simply to let the target roll the negative dice themselves, whihc obviously doesnt alter the core mechanics of the game.

But to take things further, another idea I am exploring, is allowing characters to spend up to 3 strain to cancel sucesses, much the way vitality was used in StarWars d20.

This would change the focus of the game to one of a lot more jumping and running and diving around, and less I hit you, you hit me.

for this to work we woudl probably need to restrict the use of advantages to restore strain, perhaps by only alowing that on non combat rolls.( representing the character needing to catch his breath)

other changes this might necessitate woudl include some sort of cap on total stamina, which would be reduced by wounds taken, and perhaps increasing the dmg on some weapons to keep the lethality up when real HITS are scored.

I would also like to have stats/skills play more of a roll in not getting hit.

for example, if a skilled swordsman attacked a colonist with no melee skill, perhaps instead of 2 prple dice for defense, he woudl only get 2 black dice, or 1 black and 1 purple.

any way, just some ideas, I would love your feedback.

Interesting ideas all.

The good thing is that what you are saying is nothing new, it is intrinsec to the dice mechanics that EotE uses. You may want to give a look to old threads in the Warhammer 3 forums for ideas on what you propose (Warhammer 3 uses a very very similar dice mechanics) . We had similar discussions.

Cheers,

Yepes

Dairian said:

Wow, you through a lot at us there. Point-by-point:

Use of strain to negate hits

This is kind of interesting, but feels inconsistent with the rest of the game. Unless there are some rules I missed (and this has totally happened before), there are no ways to modify the roll after the roll. However, I think it would be totally reasonable to allow the use of extra strain to add Setback dice when you use a guarded stance, prone, or take cover maneuvers. That being said, I don't think I'd use this in my games, since there are plenty of ways to add setback dice to attack rolls already (all the maneuvers listed above plus using the massive number of advantages that are produced by many rolls plus talents and such).

Also, remember there were three different versions of the d20 Star Wars game: the original "OCR", the revise "RCR", the Sage Edition.

Restriction of the use of advantage to restore strain

As it stands, I don' t feel strain works as a limited resource, primarily due to 4 points:

• The large number of advantage produced on rolls
• The current cost of restoring strain (1:1)
• "Advantage to restore strain" option can be activated multiple times/roll
• Strain thresholds are relatively high

This allows a LOT of strain to be refreshed quickly before the thresholds are reached, or even approached. I've houseruled that the "Advantage to restore strain" option costs 2 adv. I've modified other advantage costs, too.

Stamina Caps

I assume this means "strain cap". I get the idea, but I feel like the book-keeping would be excessive.

Keeping Lethality Up

You seem concerned about the lethality of the game. Can you be more specific about which weapons you think need to have increased damage? This really hasn't been an issue in any of our EotE games.

Skills to increase combat difficulty

There was a lot of discussion on this in the Beta forums. Check the combat subthreads. It seems like the designers made a choice to move away from an opposed-roll model in combat during development based on some "left over" text in some beta passages. The suspicion is that it was done to simplify combat.

Melee Combat Against Unarmed Targets

Again, this got a substantial (bordering obnoxious) amount of discussion in the Beta forums. I think decreasing the difficulty to hit an unarmed opponent in melee combat is a reasonable house rule. It's also one I don't use.

-WJL

PS Yepes, can you link those WHF forums?

I have to Admit lethal dose that I havent actualy had a chance to play yet!

Thank you for pointing me to the beta forum, that was very helpful.

I get really attached to certain ideas when it comes to rpg rules, and for me, opposed check combat is one of them.

I also really prefer the notion that RPG combat shoudl play out as close to the movies as possible, meaning most of the action is ruunning, ducking, dodging, parring etc. with characters getting progressivly slower, then a single decisive blow.

This is why I cling to the notion of using strain to cancel successes, as it gives a mechanism to represent the gradual tiring.

I played a lot of second edition d20 star wars.

Dairian said:

Its called cover, bodyguard, dodge, etc etc.

There are already a plethora of options to be defensive, but you usually have to sacrifice offense to be defensive. Most of the options you posted DONT do this at all…therefore terrible game design.

You are contridicting yourself by wanting to increase lethality but making a very easy/abuseable system to regen health.

There are plenty of other ways to improve the system you just need to be more creative in your approach or let your players think.

I've been working on a system that allows characters to use their skills to find improved cover and coming up with extra tiers for improved cover. (besides adding setback dice, could also increase difficulty)

If some scholar/bookworm guy with no melee skill is attacked by a swordsman, perhaps he could use his intelligence or cunning to notice patterns/techniques and help dodge 1 incoming attack.

LethalDose said:

I have run a search and I have found this , for some reason though I cannot acces to the content. But as I said, with a bit of patiente you should find more discussions.

EotE is not a game like Warhammer where melee combat plays a pivotal role. I guess that is probably the reason why the melee combat is so much simplified. But it is true, after looking again to the Marauder talent tree, that they could have put some defensive oriented talent…in warhammer 3, since combat is neither an opposed check, the problem reimains the same, just a bit paliated by the active defences action cards (the equivalent of talents in EotE).

Cheers,

Yepes

I imagine that we will see more options as Age of Rebellion and Force & Destiny come out. Especially the latter where lightsabers and melee combat will probably be more of a focus. Right now melee combat tends to be secondary to ranged combat so we see more options for it (look at the weapon mods). Generating advantages tends to be the biggest way to modify combat, but there are actions that can be taken as well, as has been mentioned.

Good Point about ranged being the main focus.

I still feel some of my ideas stand however, nothing wrong with letting the target character roll those range based chalenge dice(plus any bonus die from cover etc. and still implement my concept of spending strain to cancel successes up to a point, as it still better reflects running ducking and diving.