They both "upgrade difficulty". It seems to me like these two talents have the potential to stack. Is this the case? Or am I missing something?

They do stack, yes.

You will be dodging s--t like a zookeeper in a monkey house...

The real beauty of all that upgrading, of course, is the higher likelihood of them generating Despair and really hosing themselves.

Yeah, they stack. So does the strain cost. You can almost take yourself out of the fight without ever being hit if you try going all out defensive too often.

If you take all the skill boxes in Pistoleer as well as Fencer, you can cap your Dodge!

Oh wait, that's SWG ...

They both "upgrade difficulty". It seems to me like these two talents have the potential to stack. Is this the case? Or am I missing something?

Nope, you're not missing a thing.

Have enough ranks in both Dodge and Sidestep, and you can force somebody shooting at you at Short Range to suddenly be rolling a pile of Challenge Dice instead of the regular single Difficulty die they were expecting. Tack on Sense's defensive Control Upgrade (particularly if you've got the Strength Upgrade) and it gets even crazier.

The trade-off however is that it's going to cost you a lot of Strain, especially Dodge since it's a "per attack" effect rather than Side Step's "entire round" effect. So you'll either need a really high Strain Threshold or a way to very quickly recover your Strain during a fight. And if the GM feels you're being too reliant on that particularly trick, they can always spend a few Threat to further push you towards your Strain Threshold.

I think Jay Little said it best when I was talking* to him after an EotE game at GenCon: "The game is ultimately one of resource management, be it Wounds, Strain, or Force Dice. You can do a lot of things, but you need the resources for it."

*The man's thoughts on game design, not just for Star Wars but in general, are both amazing and entertaining. I think the highlight of this year's GenCon was just being able to chat with the man in the JW Marriot diner for a few hours with a couple other folks, such as Venthrac and his wife.

They both "upgrade difficulty". It seems to me like these two talents have the potential to stack. Is this the case? Or am I missing something?

Nope, you're not missing a thing.

Have enough ranks in both Dodge and Sidestep, and you can force somebody shooting at you at Short Range to suddenly be rolling a pile of Challenge Dice instead of the regular single Difficulty die they were expecting. Tack on Sense's defensive Control Upgrade (particularly if you've got the Strength Upgrade) and it gets even crazier.

The trade-off however is that it's going to cost you a lot of Strain, especially Dodge since it's a "per attack" effect rather than Side Step's "entire round" effect. So you'll either need a really high Strain Threshold or a way to very quickly recover your Strain during a fight. And if the GM feels you're being too reliant on that particularly trick, they can always spend a few Threat to further push you towards your Strain Threshold.

I think Jay Little said it best when I was talking* to him after an EotE game at GenCon: "The game is ultimately one of resource management, be it Wounds, Strain, or Force Dice. You can do a lot of things, but you need the resources for it."

*The man's thoughts on game design, not just for Star Wars but in general, are both amazing and entertaining. I think the highlight of this year's GenCon was just being able to chat with the man in the JW Marriot diner for a few hours with a couple other folks, such as Venthrac and his wife.

That was the highlight of our show as well. We must do that again next year.

Yeah, the only difference is that Side Step and Defensive Stance require a maneuver and only work for their respective kinds of attacks (ranged and melee), but last the whole round, while Dodge doesn't require a maneuver and can be used for either, but it only lasts for one attack.

But yeah, if you had Dodge 2 and 2 in one of the others, and you performed the maneuver for the latter and suffered 2 strain for that and 2 to also use Dodge, you could upgrade it by a whopping 4! But, you also suffer all of that strain, and that's gonna add up.

That was the highlight of our show as well. We must do that again next year.