Really good cover could give your enemies 2 setback dice if i remember correctly.

Edit: It says so on p.213

I think he meant jumping behind improved cover is better than just armored cloth. For the record I generally think cover plus armor should stack

I understand both sides on this conflict of thoughts but i think the meta-game reason weights more in my mind.

It would be so many black dice rolling all combat and really easy stacking up 3-4 black dice and i think it would slow down the fast tempo of the fights. But this is only my thought of it. Logically it should stack.

This really is a later game type question. PCs aren't likely to have armor that grants setback dice for awhile, so they'll be sticking to cover. The ruling that they don't stack will make that early NPC with armored clothing or what have you more impressive as they move about the battlefield without trying to hide.

Well i disagree, it's only 1000 credits to buy an armour that gives 1 defence so many could afford it at character creation with extra obligation, or after one or a few sessions at least most should be able to buy it if they want to. It's not that rare or expensive.

I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm saying that the standard is going to be PCs without that sort of equipment. How much in the way of actual credits they get vs specific rewards and what options have they to actually get specific equipment even with money are in the hands of the GM.

Unless it's a small group, the PC who spends 1000 credits on one piece of armor is putting the majority of their money into that armor, ignoring a lot of other worthwhile equipment. In the groups I've played with, I don't think that's likely to be where people put their money (more likely to get a better weapon on the fighting types and more likely to buy gear for other skills for the rest). If that's not your experience, then more early consideration probably should go into how those stack.

Sino, armored clothing only costs 1000 (from memory, so this could be wrong), and cover is abundant. For that matter, the Vibrosword is only 750. For only 10 extra obligation at character creation you could have a character with this problem in the first round of combat in any situation.

Ranged and taking cover, or melee with the sword. Both cases have stacking armor potentials and the Devs seem to be indicating that it doesn't stack.

By the rules, both those scenarios would be 1 defense, and the armored clothing would seem to be a waste.

Logically it should stack, and this is where the problem is. If my sword could potentially deflect the blow entirely (by adding a black die that could cancel a possible successful hit), and my armor is built as such that it too could completely deflect the blow (same mechanics). Then why don't they stack. Just because someone's attack bypassed my sword doesn't mean they bypassed my armor yet.

Same for ranged combat. If I'm in armored clothing and hiding behind a table I flipped for cover. The ranged attack has to bypass the table (which could deflect or absorb the damage, or just make it harder to hit me as you can't see my body) and then bypass my armor even if you get past the table.

It does, as you point out, promote cavalier combat styles. A person with armored clothing has no reason to flip the table and hide behind it. He can stand there out in the open and be just as well off as his comrades who are hiding. Maybe this can be played narratively. The armored PC is doing so in order to draw fire from the weaker members. The PC with the armored clothing can also focus more time to aiming and improving offense rather than seeking cover, and doing it again if the cover is destroyed. But the player could do that anyways.

The devs are taking the stance of suspending disbelief for ease of gameplay. No math, smaller dice pools, quicker gameplay. The problem with that explination is that in most cases we are talking 1 die vs 2.

Most groups house rule stuff for any RPG they play, so my stance is to just say 'to each their own'. Whatever works for your group/gm, go with it. We're going to stack defense until I see that it is causing problems.

I don't think its standard that PC are broke, and if they are that would be boring. And I'm not saying that the PC should be rich either, but at least enough money to go around and buy some gear now once in a while. And yes they should focus on different things, not just weapons or armour.

And on a side note, there is not really that much other worthwhile equipment besides vehicles, weapons and armour. Not much, and the most is considerably cheaper than the rest.

And no, it's not my experience that PCs buy armour and weapons for most of their money, they wouldn't need it anyway in most of my campaigns in where combat is non-existing.

This may have been addressed and I missed it. If so I apologize.

It seems to me the crux of this is the "multiple sources of defense don't stack" line. It looks to me that based on the context around it that it is clearly referring to the three defenses (melee, general, ranged) and simply saying that for any given one you use the better of either your general or specific (ranged or melee, depending) instead of adding them together. So anything that increases your ranged defense actually raises it but then you'd have to decide whether your defense or ranged defense was better when actually being attacked.

People do realize that Defense and Soak are separate things right? If, by design, you are wearing armor you might be slightly harder to hit, but mostly it helps in the damage department by adding soak . If you are wearing padded armor and hiding behind a crate, the crate is making you harder to hit ( as designed ). The armor is making you harder to damage . FFG could have allowed both items to stack, but they didn't.

Edge of the Empire is designed to make hitting people a small part of what goes into a combat encounter. You don't, and shouldn't imo, need to build an entire character around being able to hit or avoid being hit in combat ( there's already a game for that...it's called d20) . Instead, we've got: defense, action economy, gear, gear qualities, talents, skills ( even non combat ones ), modifier symbols on the dice, characteristics, destiny points, soak, strain, wounds and critical hits that all feed together to make a combat encounter a dynamic thing. That is, if you choose to make it so. But trying to redesign the game to play like another game seems odd to me. Unless you are also going to redesign the other factors of combat that will stack up and influence each other.

Anyway, everyone is totally free to play and houserule the game how ever they want. I don't mean to belittle anyone's game preferences because I've got my own quibbles and tweaks as well. If the game gives you brussel sprouts and you hate brussel sprouts, I'm certainly not going to force you to like them. I just think that it's hard to drill too deeply into a single aspect of the game mechanics without seeing how other things hang together.

Mostly I just hope every group that actually plays Edge of the Empire is able to get the experience out of it that they enjoy. Sorry for the soapbox ranting ( but not sorry enough to not post it ) .

lol @ Callidon

You came off a pit passive aggressive there, but in the end you have a point.

As others have stated, the point of Edge is to have fun. If the suspension of disbelief here is a little much for some folks to swallow. Let them play it however they want.

1 defense die is a little light to be breaking the game in all honesty though. That's what we are talking about here. This game is far deadlier than D20, so hit avoidance actually should be paramount. I'd hardly count the idea of stacking defense (logically) as someone trying to D20 up your Edge.

Not that people haven't been trying to do it for other rules, I just don't see it in this case.

I think armor defense and cover defense should logically stack.

However.

From a gameplay perspective I do see the whole idea behind people in armor not getting any advantage from cover, which means they don't mind being in the open and charge. That leads to some interresting play styles, so not everyone will dive for cover all the time.

But the thing is that if there is effective cover around, people always DO dive for it in the movies. Just look at the Death Star excursion, or the battle on Endor.

And that's precisely my point. If you take THAT MANY precautions not to get hurt, I think there should be some level of reward for it.

But the thing is that if there is effective cover around, people always DO dive for it in the movies. Just look at the Death Star excursion, or the battle on Endor.

And that's precisely my point. If you take THAT MANY precautions not to get hurt, I think there should be some level of reward for it.

In the Original Trilogy, the only person who has armor with a defense die is Boba Fett, who doesn't really get any chances to jump into cover. In the prequels... I think the only person who would get it is Jango Fett? He also seemed to use primarily active moving around combat styles rather than jumping behind things, but he also pretty much just fought Jedi and cover doesn't work against melee.

So, based on the movies alone, nobody who has armor with defense dice uses cover. Stormtroopers just have Laminate, which is only soak.

You could interpret the armour's Defense value as a bonus that lets the character move around and actively do something during combat while still retaining the bonus he'd get from cover. Having everyone squat behind their piece of cover and shoot back and forth until one side wins sounds a little dull. Combat in EotE should, in my personal opinion, be more like a Tarantino movie with lots of crazy stunts and dazzling heroics.

It can be, but I also like the idea of it being a shoot-out, since that's as Star Wars as crazy stunts and dazzling heroics. Why limit yourself when both options are possible?

True enough. Sometimes the "war of attrition"-thing can be tense enough, especially if the PCs are hunkered down trying to buy time for someone else.

Tips on surviving EotE Combat:

1. Don' t play with guns kids. Your space-moms weren't joking. That sith is dangerous.
2. Don't play with knives kids. Seriously didn't your robo-nanny ever teach you anything?
3. No one wants to go out in a bodybag so use your words and your cred-stick
4. Discretion really is the better part of valor.
5. Most deals get worse all the time. Plan accordingly.
6. Before the fur starts to fly, plan your exit as cleanly as you can...who are we kidding it won't ever be clean... still give it the old college try.
7. Walls are your friend. Hide behind durasteel ones and tuck in your dangly bits wherever and whatever those might be. Don't poke anything out...it'll get shot at.
8. Don't stay in one place for long.
9. Can't hit what you can't see. Try to remedy that without being seen yourself.
10. Curiosity killed the gand. Don't look around the corner when the blaster bolts stop unexpectedly. Don't run in and grab the satchel full of credit chits in the center of the old motel courtyard. Don't steal the cake, because it is a lie.
11. Dirty old tricks are always the best ones. Especially the one where you call down a CorSec Authority raid on your own meetup to give you the chaotic cover needed to escape ... and at least prison is three squares a cycle.
12. Wookies make for awesome, if slightly musty, mobile plushie cover.
13. Don't listen to the Order 66 podcast. No one else does.
14. The Galaxy can't see your setback dice, but they can see you. That can be problematic. Refer to #1 - #13

Hello all, I wanted to wait until I got permission from Sam to post our exchange. I did, so here it is. I hope this clarifies RAW and RAI concerning Armor + Cover.

Warren asks, "I am wearing armored clothing, standing behind cover, and I have both defense talents from Force Sensitive Exile, what is my effective defense?"

Hello Mr. H

Cover and armor don't stack because both give you "ranged defence X" or "melee defence X". Cover does not add to defence, as per page 202, it says "allow the character to gain ranged defence 1." It is not adding to his defence, it is granting him a set defence value.

On the other hand, Sixth Sense and Superior Reflexes both state "gain +1 ranged defense" or "+1 melee defense." The plus indicates that it adds to existing defence values. Therefore, if you were standing in cover, wearing armored clothing, and had sixth sense, your ranged defense would be 2. (Cover and armored clothing doesn't stack, you pick one or the other, but sixth sense does).

Hope that helps!

Sam Stewart

Ah ha I think (not realizing that the Sam that answered my question is, THE SAM) this fellow surely hasn't thought of pg 213.

So I say, "Yeah that helps a lot. However cover on page 213 reads increases the characters ranged defense by one, which to my mind is very similar to +1 ranged defense."

Sam Says

Yeah, I apologize for that; the two are a bit contradictory. However, the page 202 interpretation is the correct one.

Much appreciated, Warren. Since you've taken the time to find confirmation to this from The Sam, would you mind posting in the EotE Core Rulebook Errata thread and mention that p213, Cover should state "allows the character to gain ranged defense 1" rather than "increases ranged defense by 1" (confirmed by The Sam)? I know I could do it myself but it wouldn't feel right. Thanks!

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/85819-eote-core-rulebook-errata

This is very helpful. I was taking a more conservative approach with this, even with the Force: Sense powers. As such, I stand corrected, but having armour defense values not stack with cover still makes sense to me.

But now, just to add some confusion to a topic that was getting un-confused fast:

The description of the Defensive weapon quality states: "A character wielding a weapon with the Defensive quality ncreases his melee defence by the weapon's Defensive rating."

Should that stack with other melee defence? And how about general defence, that offers both types?

As the wording is "increases" this is as with the Sixth Sense talents "+1" - it adds to the existing defence, so therefore it stacks. At least from how I understand the episode and his various replies to questions about this. Cover is "gain" which would either replace armour defence - if cover defence is 2 - or if armour provide no defence, you gain 1 ranged defence, since you have 0 from armour.

I believe my personal house rule is going to be like defenses (same sort - armor, defensive weapon, cover, etc) do not stack. Against what Sam says, I'm going to allow seperate sources of defense to stack, but place a maximum of 4 dice. I think that is a better way to prevent dice bloat without creating an issue of certain armored people gaining no benefit from diving behind most cover.

Well most armour doesn't provide defence bonus, not armour you'll start out with anyway (without taking on extra obligation for cash that is). Those that do are expensive and could be considered a mobile light cover if that makes sense both armour and cover provide defence (the wearer gains defence, the one in cover gains defence), defensive/deflecting weapons increase defence, which is different semantics and therefore meaning. Same with talents.

Although I've been playing with armour and cover stacking during the beta (most of my players have armoured clothing or similar stated home brew armours). It's not been breaking the game, so there is no reason in my experience that this shouldn't be ok. After dodge and side-step was changed to upgrade attack checks rather than provide setback dice, the pools became smaller and easier to handle anyway