Hello there.

I'm a long-time GM who've just picked up the EotE system to try something new and because I thought the dice system in particular looked very interesting. Previously I've been running a (very) long-time Star Wars campaign using West End Games' D6 system.

I've been reading up on the core rules for the past week and am really looking forward to trying it out with my players. But there's one thing (right now, anyway) that I'm wondering about.

When vehicles (not starships) fire at characters their cannons use the planetary scale unless the description states otherwise. In other words, multiply the damage by 10. My concern is, what (if any) are the penalties to hit? The difference in silhouette between, say, an AT-PT walker and a character is only 1. This means no increase in difficulty, since that only happens for every 2 difference between attacker and target. And since planetary scale is much longer than character scale the range is pretty much always Short.

Is this really the case, or am I missing something here? Because a hit that does 50+ damage will wipe out that PC and anyone standing next to him, every time. I hope someone can set me straight on this.

Nope, you're not missing anything. Vehicle-scale weapons really are that nasty, and it's in the players' best interests to run and put whatever cover they can between them and those big guns.

However, if the vehicle is attacking a bunch of characters on foot, I'd use the character range bands instead of the vehicle ones. This will probably put the vehicles at Medium or even Long Range in some cases, which is well within shooting range for most vehicles, but will make the shots more difficult and thus easier for the PCs to avoid.

Nope, you're not missing anything. Vehicle-scale weapons really are that nasty, and it's in the players' best interests to run and put whatever cover they can between them and those big guns.

However, if the vehicle is attacking a bunch of characters on foot, I'd use the character range bands instead of the vehicle ones. This will probably put the vehicles at Medium or even Long Range in some cases, which is well within shooting range for most vehicles, but will make the shots more difficult and thus easier for the PCs to avoid.

All true, but like the speeder bike isn't the AT-PT armed with something personal scale? I don't have the book in front of me, but I keep thinking that was the case.

Wow. That's... harsh. Even a speeder bike (with its character-scale weapon and 11 damage) is going to murder anyone it hits while being able to absorb 20 damage before going down. I'm all in favour of vehicles being tougher than characters, but this seems a little extreme to me.

Its not really that surprising given that a blaster rifle does base 9 damage and with enough successes can kill a character in one or 2 hits easily....Combat is deadly and players need to recognize that and play accordingly.

Also as a GM, you should not really be putting players in these situations without other options, workarounds, cover, etc.. Why would they stick around and fight a speeder bike? Give them options to avoid it entirely or use cover effectively, etc...

Someone once said combat is a last resort and almost treated like a penalty for failing something prior. I don't entirely believe thats true, but its something to consider, and there should always be an out. Of course, bad play or plot lines can bring these situations up, but try to be creative as a GM and give them ways of balancing the odds.

You have a point. Like I said, I haven't actually tried the system out yet. I imagine that once we've played a few sessions I'll have a more intuitive understanding of how combat flows.

Remember that even at a personal scale, two solid blaster hits on a speeder bike will take it down in spectacular fashion. There's a good reason Han Solo stuck his hands in the air when the AT-ST walked up to him in RoTJ (even if Chewie was the pilot). One shot from an AT-ST would obliterate most human sized objects. It's even worse that they're linked!

Wow. That's... harsh. Even a speeder bike (with its character-scale weapon and 11 damage) is going to murder anyone it hits while being able to absorb 20 damage before going down. I'm all in favour of vehicles being tougher than characters, but this seems a little extreme to me.

Actually, just shoot the pilot, at least in the case of the speeder bike

The AT-PT is a walking tank and should be treated the same way most people would treat your average combat-ready tank in today's world... namely, getting the hell out of it's line of fire.

As noted, combat in EotE is dangerous, as a couple of solid hits from a blaster rifle or blaster carbine will drop most characters outright, compared to the d20 systems, particularly Saga Edition, where after a few levels most PCs could shrug off a few shots from a blaster rifle without too much worry.

Also, as the GM, it's your responsibility to not force your PCs into no-win deathtrap scenarios like fighting a well-armed combat vehicle without the proper tools or a viable means of escape. Plus, the general assumption on FFG's part is that PCs in Edge of the Empire are going to more akin to the cast of Firefly than heavily-armed elite commandos (at least to begin with).

While I agree that vehicle weapons are nasty, and should be, especially when fighting a military force there might be some times when you can appropriately lower it to personal scale.

If a bunch of gansters have jury rigged a big gun onto the back of their truck, it might just be an E-Web, or even a light repeater, which is no doubt super nasty, but characters may at least have a chance of success. A lot of the guns that get mounted on criminals vehicles, or smaller disorganized governments, might well be some jury rigged personal scale weapons.

I was just reading through the vehicle combat rules and had a stroke of inspiration. While I believe that vehicle-scaled weapons should be lethal to individual characters they should also have a harder time hitting individual characters. For one, it justifies using character-scale weapons on for example the AT-ST to his the PCs rather than its main blaster.

In order for this to work I'd make the vehicle (let's just keep using the AT-ST in this example) use the character-scale range bands rather than the planetary scale. Then I'd look at the silhouette difference between the AT-ST and the PCs (in this case a difference of 1) and the range to the target (let's say Medium, which makes the difficulty Average).

Then you just do what you do with most dice: take the highest of the two numbers (2) as Difficulty dice, and use the lowest (1) to upgrade to a Challenge dice. Suddenly the AT-ST rolls one Difficulty die and one Challenge die to hit rather than just one Difficulty die.

With the silhouette differencesanx the range bands, the vehicles should take a fairly decent penalty to that shot, especially if the group members are in cover. Not to mention, 50 damage wouldn't kill them... Only incapacitate them and critically injure them.