Because I am total nerd with absolutely nothing better to do, I gave a second listened to the recent Order 66 podcast that featured a lengthy interview with Edge of the Empire Lead Designer Jay Little and Lead Developer Sam Stewart. In addition to making me hungry for both chili and pie, the show featured a lot of answers to player questions.
Some of these answers were good, specific, targeted answers to rules questions, and I wanted to collect those here for reference.
Many other questions were more about design theory, asking why the devs did things a certain why. They were all interesting (especially the one about pie), and I totally recommend you listen to the podcast, which I've linked below. However, the purpose of this thread is just to clarify some of the rules questions that have caused confusion among the players.
So, without further ado, here are the questions by category:
Source: http://ia801901.us.archive.org/23/items/Episode14_20130724/episode14.mp3
ITEMS
Q: Do missile tubes come preloaded with 6 missiles?
A: Yes, all the weapons come preloaded with ammo.
Q: How much do missiles cost? (Referring to buying reloads for the missile tubes.)
A: 100 to 200 credits, depending. The missiles should all be highly illegal, however.
Q: If a droid with cybernetic enhancements is hit with an ion weapon, do the cybernetics stop working as described on page 173? Or do they simply suffer the normal droid effects of such attacks?
A: Per the RAW, the cybernetic would stop working, as well as the other effects that the ion
weapon would have.
Q: How do jetpacks work exactly? Does a character flying a jetpack operate at the planetary scale for movement speed, or at the personal scale?
A: It depends on the situation. In personal combat a character moving via a jetpack will operate at personal scale. Because of the jetpack's great speed, in personal scale it might allow a character to get from extreme range all the way to short range in possibly one maneuver, if the GM thinks that makes sense. If that same jetpack-flying character is chasing a vehicle such as a speeder, however, then it might operate at planetary scale. It basically takes GM adjudication. No pilot check is necessary if the player is simply moving from point A to point B and there are no consequences for failure. A check might be warranted if there's terrain or other risks involved in flying the jetpack.
Q: Why does the weighted head attachment, which is the only attachment for bludgeoning weapons, require two hard points when none of the bludgeoning weapons in the book have any hard points?
A: Per Sam: "Some of the things we did in the book, we did... with forward compatibility in mind. Just because the attachment may not work with any of the weapons we have right now, that's definitely not going to be the case later on."
Q: The Inventor talent grants a benefit "When constructing new items...." Where can I find the rules for item construction? They don't appear to be in the core rulebook.
A: Basically, see previous answer. This is more forward-compatibility stuff.
CHARACTER CREATION
Q: If I buy a rank in a non-career skill and it later becomes a career skill, do I get refunded the additional "out of career" cost I paid when I purchased that rank?
A: No, you do not get a refund. You are better off buying the specialization first and then putting ranks into its skills afterward.
Q: [insert question about whether the talent tree layouts, including specific link placements, have any errors, or is everything in the book as intended.]
A: The talent tree layouts you see in the core rulebook are all as intended. There are no layout errors or incorrectly-placed links. This includes the Slicer specialization tree.
Q: [insert question about whether a change from the final beta update to the release of the core rulebook was in error, or was intended, such as the change to the Twi'lek's starting wounds value .]
A: Where there are conflicts between the final beta update and the core rulebook, the core rulebook is correct in all such cases. Mentions of the Surveillance skill, however, are errors and not intended.
COMBAT
Q: Since initiative checks are Simple (i.e., no difficulty) skill checks, can Advantage and Triumph (or Threat and Despair, if the GM upgrades the check's difficulty somehow) generated by initiative checks be spent as normal?
A: Yes, but with the caveat that since Advantage is the tiebreaker for initiative, it's best to leave it as is. Triumph could be spent to maybe get the drop on someone or get in a free maneuver either before combat begins or during the first round.
Q: By rule, the benefit of the Aim maneuver is lost if the character takes damage. If a character voluntarily suffers strain to take an additional maneuver on his turn, would the strain loss count as damage that cancels the bonus from Aim?
A: When a character voluntarily suffers strain to take an additional maneuver, that is not considered "taking damage." Therefore the answer is no, this does not nullify the bonus for aiming.
Q: Can you hold an action in Edge of the Empire?
A: There is no rule as such for this. A character who wishes to act later should simply take a later slot in the initiative, but there is no rule for acting "just before" an enemy does something. The GM might call for an opposed roll in such a circumstance if he deems it appropriate, perhaps using Cool to resolve a pistol duel, for example.
Q: The rulebook states that different sources of defense don't stack. Is this referring to different sources of personal defense, such as multiple layers of armor, or to any sources of defense, such as armor and cover.
A: Unless a source of defense specifically states that it stacks with other sources of defense, then it does not stack. Armor and cover, for example, do not stack; a character can only benefit from one of these sources of defense at a time.