In the latest preview, "Bound for Adventure, part two", they present the defense value. It is said that you determine your defense score at the same time has soak, strain and wound treshold.

I was wondering how it works ? Is it like defense for ships where it is the shield rating or more like an active defense like lightsaber parry or a bonus from armor ? Maybe from special talents ?

Thanks a lot

I was also wondering if it was purple dices or black dices in increased difficulty ??

JP_JP said:

A character's (or target's) Defense rating adds Setback (black) dice to attack rolls targeting that character. Your defense is value is primarily determined by your gear (armor, shield generators, etc), not your attributes, so I'm not sure why the say you determine your defense vscore at the same time as soak (relies on Brawn), strain (relies on Willpower) and wound threshold (relies on Brawn). While the Beta text (pg 134) refers to talents that increase melee rating, I can't actually find any that explicitly address "Defense rating", though several (e.g. Marauder's Defensive stance & Scoundrel's Side Step) have the same effect (add setback dice to attacks).

While this makes the target harder to hit, it doesn't increase the "difficulty" of the roll (Simple, Easy, Average, etc). The difficulty of the task (e.g. hit a target at medium range, or doing a back flip) determines the number of Difficulty (purple) dice and is usually constant, though some specific situations (e.g. firing a rifle at an engaged target) may call for increasing difficulty dice.

The wording in some of these sections requires some finesse to really understand.

Hope that helps.

-WJL

Thanks Lethaldose for the explicit reply.

Like you said, its probably armor or talent based bonus (like the talent Dodge) that give setback dices. Can't wait to get the rulebook to check this out.

Thanks again.

JP_JP said:

Well… I just reread that section in the preview. This section in particular reads:

[emphasis mine]

It was explicitly stated by developers that there were changes made to the system that were not reflected in the beta notes. The bolded text may (Let me emphasize this is PURE CONJECTURE!) represent such a change. I hope they didn't tie it to Agi, though. It's MY OPINION that that abilty governs too many combat facets as it stands.

-WJL

LethalDose said:

I agree with you about agility being tied to too many combat facets. But it's an easy way to make a character combat viable, just give him 3 in agility at character creation. But I think it's not tied to a character's attributes.

If you look at the Ween Tanwa character sheet made for the article "Bound for Adventure, part two", you will notice that the character has 0/0 in defense (range/melee). So it's probably not tied to our character's attributes, unless it's something like defense = (agility - 3), but I doubt it.

I guess the final answer lies in the core rulebook.
Thanks again

JPL

Here another question for "Part 2". Starting Cunning for Rodians is 2, and at some point it mentions:

"Looking at the skills we find most compelling, we discover that most of them use Cunning, so we boost that characteristic."

… but it's still 2 on the final character sheet. Mistake? Laziness? Something I missed?

LexMajor said:

It's probably a small mistake ; they forgot to update the character sheet for the final version.

They've got +1 rank in Ranged Light for 10xp, 30xp spent on talents, that leaves them 70xp from the 110 they had at the beginning. So if they raised Cunning from 2 to 3 (30xp) and then from 3 to 4 (40xp), they would reach their total of 110xp.