Hello, as the topic says, this is a question for those of you who were involved in the beta testing of the game.

I was reading through the "final week update" file and I realized that there is a table with weapons where the weapon damage has been reduced by 1 or 2 points in many weapons.

Why was that? Can someone explain it a bit please? or redirect me to the thread in the beta forums where this was discussed (I cannot find it)

Cheers,

Yepes

As I understand it, the changed/clarified it so that even the one uncancelled success you will always get on a hit adds to the damage. As such, they reduced the base damage by one to make up for it.

It may have also been a function of needing to nerf the lighter autofire weapons, primarily the HBR and the LRB. Because of how Autofire was tuned when those changes were made, they were exceedingly vicious weapons, and now they play reasonably well. Since the HBR " should" do more damage than a BR, they had to drop those damage ratings down, too, for internal consistency, or something.

TBH, our group saw very little diffrence in the feel of play before and after that change.

On the other hand, melee weapons, especially the vibro weapons, got nerfed 6 ways from sunday in one of the early patches. I don't really remember the rationale behind it, though. The vibro weapons got buffed up a little bit by increasing the pierce value on the knife and reducing the crit activation costs. If you'll excuse the pun, the point of the melee weapons (get it? point? Knife? pointy end goes in the other maBACK OFF I'M TRYING!!) is not so much to inflict damage, but to inflict crits. To be honest, though, the melee issue hasn't come up much in our games and my 'crit theory' above is largely conjecture. We just don't really have melee orientated characters in our group.

-WJL

Can you point to where you saw this?

We have the beta that essentially (not so blatantly) says the FIRST success passes the check while any REMAINING successes count for extra damage.

But then the errata doco speaks to damage as if ALL successes count towards extra damage.

This came up with my players the other day, and it we just agreed to count ALL successes as counting to damage.

Thnaks in advance!

Kintaro1 said:

The wording about Successes stated "Each remaining success adds +1 damage to a successful attack"… Which seemed to lead to some confusion by beta testers as to what successes remained. So, the update clarified that all Successes not cancelled by Failures were added to damage.

As to the reduction in damage… That had nothing to do with the clarification about Net Successes and more to do with balancing the lethality of the system. Weapons had their damage reduced so that characters could take more than one hit before really being out of a fight.

Kallabecca said:

The first EotE Order 66 Podcast available here addresses this at around the 46 minute mark, with Jay Little (Designer) confirming that ALL successes on the dice count as extra damage.

Thanks guys for the reply so far, but please do not debiate.

Why is it that they reduced the damage rating of weapons? was this, that it was not clear at the beginning if extra damage was due to each success or it was each success after the first? or there were other reasons?

Cheers

Yepes

Yepesnopes said:

Go check the Beta forums for the update week when they changed it.

Kallabecca said:

As I said there is not much information there. It dates from the week 3 update and 90% of the discussion spins around the f@"#ing who cares Light saber. 7% of the discussions goes about the changes performed on the autofire. Then the remaining 3% of the discussion gives some hints like

"now combat will be a bit safer for PCs" or things like "I am concerned about the naked dwarf (wookie) sindrome" or "melee weapons have been nerfed too much" but there is not too much explanation of the "why" another option would have been to increase armour protections instead of lowering weapon damage for example.

Nevermind, I will stick to the original table from the beta book and then decide if I apply the update or not.

Cheers,

Yepes

final beta update doesnt mention ANYTHING related to this topic, so whats the verdict?

I've seen single player drop henchman in 1 round with dual wielding pistoleer, so I kinda shy on the side of LOWERING damage, and making encounter last longer.

Yepesnopes said:

Well, then you have the same information that we have. If they didn't give the rationale there, I don't know where they would have. The combat subthread, maybe?

So, I don't think it's possible for us to give you the answer you want, because the only people that would know are the ones who made the changes, and the people who they told why they made the changes, and it sounds like none of the posters here fall into either of those subsets.

And in these situations, debates gonna happen.

-WJL

Diggles said:

I've posted this opinion before, but I'll do it again here: I LIKE the fast, brutal nature of the combat in this game. It feels like combat carries serious danger and encourages the PCs to be more creative.

-WJL

LethalDose said:

Would it be fair to say that you regard combat as more of a necessary evil, rather than an end in itself?

kinda an action scenes link story elements together approach rather than a story elements link action scenes together kind of thing?

ErikB said:

No.

IN ABSOLUTELY NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM does your statement represent my opinion on the matter.

I've provided a more complete response in a new thread because it is almost completely off-topic and to respect Yepesnopes' request to avoid debates on this thread.

-WJL