It seems way too easy to get hit in this Star Wars game.

Most combat rolls are simply a skill check against a very low difficulty. Personal combat is settled as skill vs range. Space combat is settled within range as skill vs size. There are small modifiers here and there in the form of d6s. Sometimes this comes off as feeling right. If Luke, Han, Chewie, and Leia are in the detention center of the Death Star and being chased by a squad of faceless storm troopers there's a sense of desperation. They need cover and distance. Standing out in the open guns blazing is too dangerous. I like it!

Then you've got the scenario of Luke and Darth Vader in a lightsaber fight. I know the right book isn't out yet, but they need some kind of sub-system to switch up combat. It's not right to just have them hack into eachother until one drops. Vader is strong and wears some effective armor, but in this game so far it's only that keeps him going. Luke is screwed. The way it should work instead is that skill with the blade should prolong the fight (with modifiers; Vader's strength, for example). The standard "skill vs range" model doesn't support this. That's a concern I'll have up until the Force book is out.

Then you've got another scenario of Han, Chewie, Leia, the droids, etc on Endor... surrounded by stormtroopers and Walkers in a desperate firefight. I don't see how with this system you can survive something like this. I could see those troopers as minion groups and the PCs able to pick them off with some regularity, but how are they going to survive being shot back at? With a little cover? While they remain at medium range? How can this be anything but a very short and very messy encounter? There are the rebel commandos and the ewoks too, but how much can the PCs expect to take? Should I just wait for Age of Rebellion for mass combat rules? Again, until then, I'm going to be worried about this game.

So far, there's not much skill involved in staying alive it doesn't seem. It seems like you just blast away at eachother until somebody drops. In the Star Wars films they like these long epic fights where the good guys look like heroes the entire time. The game seems like it wants a brief demolition derby where everybody is getting blown away left and right.

Its expected that you will take hits in this system. However, compared to other systems its pretty easy to heal in EoE. You can use stims yourself as a maneuver, other people can use them on you without any training as well. Medics can use their expertise for even better heals. In WOTC SW:Saga ed, if your guy with medical skills got incap'd, you were pretty screwed.

Plus, unlike Saga, this game actually has damage reduction. Remember anywhere from 2-6 damage from an enemy on average is going to get absorbed.

You are expected to use cover, line of sight, defensive skills, defensive equipment etc.

If you dont have combat skills like R2 or C-3P0 you arent expected to be on the front lines. I'm sure even Leia had some combat training.

For instance, think your YT-1300 is going to get chewed up by Tie Fighters? Upgrade your shield generator and angle the shields. Unless they get you with 'gain the advantage' you can keep ALL of your shields facing them...making it very hard for them to get shots landed on you that do damage at all.

You have a crew of 3-5. Co-pilot can jam enemy sensors, mis-direct incoming missiles. etc etc etc

Apparently Age of Rebellion 's beta book doesn't have mass combat rules, but from what I understand the skill rank cap applies even to minion groups, so a group can only be so big (I believe seven minions?) before additional minions in that group stop adding skill ranks, although as someone mentioned the extra minions can be a "buffer" against skill rank depletion from attrition.

Moreover, a minion group can only make one attack at a time, so in your Endor example a stormtrooper group can make one attack against one of the aforementioned hero characters at a time, while splitting them up into smaller groups so that they can collectively make multiple attacks makes each attack less likely to hit. I should add that all the Rebel commandos and Ewoks mean way more potential targets for the stormtrooper groups, so presumably you'd only have a few stormtroopers at a time if even that would be targeting the hero characters.

As far as the player characters' own abilities... they have at least double a stormtrooper's wound threshold (my favorite example to use is that a Trandoshan PC starts with as much Wound Threshold as a whole three-stormtrooper minion group!) and in particular Han, Leia, and Chewie (as "direct combatants") would be the equivalent of high-level PCs/Nemesis-level NPCs -- even moreso at Endor than in the first Death Star -- so while they may soak around 2 or 3 less damage (depending on how one rates their clothing) than a stormtrooper, they've got way more to go before they're dropped, they don't automatically go down on crits like the minion stormtroopers do and their odds (i.e. Han's) of downing a stormtrooper per attack aren't half bad -- and as mentioned, cover, line of sight, Defense-boosting and other defensive abilities/gear and otherwise detrimental effects against the stormtroopers' attack rolls.

Combat in EotE is, indeed, pretty high on the 'gritty realism' scale, but there's still plenty of room for the 'fantastic and heroic' thanks, in no small part, to the narrative dice system.

In the Luke vs. Vader fight, Luke *was* pretty much screwed. Pretty quickly, his goal changed from 'confront Vader' to 'escape Vader'. On Endor, if the stormtroopers magically knew which person (or people) attacking them was the PC, and they all ganged up, then, yes, it would be a very short fight. That makes sense, since the Rebels were walking into a carefully crafted trap. Without the Ewoks to soak up some of the incoming fire, and reduce the Imperial numbers the heroes would have gotten mopped up rather quickly.

Avoiding 'getting dropped' involves, in no small part, the creative use of Advantage and Triumph, and those skills listed outside of the 'Combat Skills' section of the character sheet. Also, remember that one round in EotE is roughly a minute in length, not the more typical 5-6 second span seen in many RPGs.

As for the difficulties, that is done for one simple reason. A game with a fixed set of difficulties is easier to balance than a game where the difficulties vary widely. If, for example, your Brawl skill made you harder to hit, in addition to making you hit harder, a character who *wasn't* focused in Brawl would never be able to take on a character who *is* and expect to do *anything* other than tie up their own limited set of actions for the few rounds it would take to be knocked out of commission.

If you want a more heroic feel, as seen in the movies, encourage your players to describe the results of their actions, even if they miss and spend a few advantage to recover strain.

As for mass combat rules, they're no more necessary for a mass combat *scene* than they are for a cantina brawl scene. A certain subset of the combatants are going to be interacting with the PCs. Run that subset, and use the rest of it for flavor. After all, when the PCs are trying to break into the bunker, you don't need to tie up time resolving what happens when the ewoks' trip line fails to topple an AT-ST. You can describe it.

If you want it to ebb and flow, more arbitrarily, assign a dice pool, say 3 green for the good guys vs. 2 purple and a red for the bad guys. Then narrate how the outcome of that roll maps to the overall combat where the PCs *aren't* directly involved. Going this route also allows the PCs to influence that roll by allocating Boost Dice and the like. It also allows them to benefit and be hindered by Advantage and Threat, or Triumph and Despair.

I don't remember characters in the films needing Stim Packs. I remember Leia gets grazed once. Threepio gets blasted. Artoo gets blasted. The Falcon gets rocked a lot. Vader takes a flesh wound on Bespin and gets kicked in the chest above Endor. Luke and Vader lose hands. That's about it. This game would have a lot more carnage than that. It looks like a fifty fifty shot or less to dodge anything.

The skill rank cap does apply to minions, but shots will still land. How many blaster rifle shots can Han Solo take? How many blaster rifle shots should he take at all? This game seems to think that characters in Star Wars should be bloody messes at the end of fights. How long can Han hold out with cover in a fire fight? In Return of the Jedi, it's for an entire third act. In this game, it's like three rounds. He isn't armored enough. That seems totally wrong.

"In the Luke vs. Vader fight, Luke *was* pretty much screwed. "

yeah but how many *hits* did he take?

Enough that he barely escaped the fight. It's hard to say precisely. After all, we don't have stats for either Luke *or* Vader.

That said, I think I see the disconnect between what you're interpreting a 'hit' to mean in system, vs. what we see happen to the heroes on screen.

When you see real, physical damage to the folks on screen, that's almost certainly a Critical Injury (some of which are relatively minor), not just a 'hit'. A normal 'hit', whether it inflicts Wound or Strain damage is mostly the general near-misses, grazing shots, and glancing blows that wear a character down to the point where they are out of the fight.

Luke probably took a few good 'hits' through the course of that fight, but most of it was spent trying not to be in the same place as Vader. Most of the Crits he took are pretty obvious. I'd imagine that most of what Vader was actually inflicting on Luke was Strain damage. After all, a lightsaber is a pretty significantly lethal weapon, and his goal was to bring Luke back *alive*.

It can be added that in Saga, there was an article describing the new system (compared to the prior Wound Points and Vitality Points in Revised) essentially saying that "the blaster bolt that drops you to 0 hp is the one that actually landed". I wouldn't be surprised if something like that was going on here.

"When you see real, physical damage to the folks on screen, that's almost certainly a Critical Injury (some of which are relatively minor), not just a 'hit'. A normal 'hit', whether it inflicts Wound or Strain damage is mostly the general near-misses, grazing shots, and glancing blows that wear a character down to the point where they are out of the fight."

right. I can get behind that. it's like Vitality points. Still though, how many of those could Luke take? If Vader is trying for strain damage, their epic duel would last 2 rounds in this game. You've got to be kidding me. If Luke is using destiny points, you might see him last an extra round. Are they just knocking the entire thing down to some quick narrative abstraction? This doesn't seem like they've gotten it right. I hope for a duel system or something later on.

In most gaming systems there is a disconnect between the way combat looks in a movie or TV show and the way it plays out in the game system.

Most games, especially videogames, use stimpacks or some kind of healing and the way that you defeat enemies is generally by wearing them down to 0 health or hit points or whatever.

Whereas in most movies, it's very seldom that a character gets shot multiple times and keeps going--it's usually one shot that kills them, and the rest of the shots they avoid.

I always figured that was just the nature of the beast.

I mean, James Bond is a super-tough character to be in a gunfight against, but in a game system he'd still have to have some figure representing his health and you'd have to wear down that health to defeat him. Whereas in a film he doesn't usually take multiple gunshots, the enemies just miss him.

I've got no problem at all with a figure representing health. The wound point/vitality point system simulated something like "plot armor" and in GURPS there are cinematic rules that let you spend excess character points to turn hits into near hits at the expense of your turn and to use fatigue to turn hits into flesh wounds. Stuff like that can turn a gritty combat system cinematic. This game uses very thin cinematic rules and the rest of it isn't realistic. It's just a bloody mess. Chewbacca the sidekick can take a pounding, but heroic Han is gonna drop fast. Not enough armor. What is up with that?

With Vader and Luke on Cloud City... why can't it be that Vader was taking it easy on Luke?

I like ya, and I want'cha. Now we can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way, the choice is yours.

As far as "hits to damage", there's really not a lot of "wound damage" moments going on in that duel; the first phase starts with a "feeling out", then Vader disarms Luke, he manages to con Luke into falling into the carbon-freezing pit, Luke uses a Force Leap to escape (clinging to the overhanging hoses and pipes) before turning one of those hoses on Vader followed by Force Move to get his weapon back but his subsequent attack misses, until eventually he manages a kick (Brawl?) that drives Vader back and off of the platform altogether... the second phase is mainly Luke's attacks missing while Vader uses Force Move to fling objects at Luke until eventually breaking the view port... and the third phase on the catwalk, with Luke having already taken strain and wounds, is where Vader finally "turns it up" and comprehensively takes the advantage; Luke manages to nick him just enough in the shoulder to get a verbal reaction out, but then very quickly it's WHAM, BAM, Critical Injury result of Maimed.

With Vader and Luke on Cloud City... why can't it be that Vader was taking it easy on Luke?

I like ya, and I want'cha. Now we can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way, the choice is yours.

As far as "hits to damage", there's really not a lot of "wound damage" moments going on in that duel; the first phase starts with a "feeling out", then Vader disarms Luke, he manages to con Luke into falling into the carbon-freezing pit, Luke uses a Force Leap to escape (clinging to the overhanging hoses and pipes) before turning one of those hoses on Vader followed by Force Move to get his weapon back but his subsequent attack misses, until eventually he manages a kick (Brawl?) that drives Vader back and off of the platform altogether... the second phase is mainly Luke's attacks missing while Vader uses Force Move to fling objects at Luke until eventually breaking the view port... and the third phase on the catwalk, with Luke having already taken strain and wounds, is where Vader finally "turns it up" and comprehensively takes the advantage; Luke manages to nick him just enough in the shoulder to get a verbal reaction out, but then very quickly it's WHAM, BAM, Critical Injury result of Maimed.

Also, Luke only hit Vader then because daddy didn't want to kill him and Luke was still bloody by the end even before he lost his hand, he was only still consious at the end because he was a Jedi. If Vader had wanted to kill Luke then Luke would have died. Even when they fight in RotJ Vader still doesn't go all out for most of the fight.

If they had stats at Cloud City like in the game, I'd say Vader has 25 maybe with all the cyber implants and Luke has 15.

Vader probably has 8 or 9 soak (meaning each hit from a lightsaber only does one wound cause they have a dam. of 10 and don't add brawn and Vader probably has the Cortosis Weave for his armor cause you know... he hunts hiding Jedi in his spare time) and Luke had 6.

Vader has 3 armor while Luke has none in his flight jacket.

By the end Vader was probably at 4-5 Wounds taken with one crit that slipped past beause Luke rolled a Triumph. While Luke was at 13-14 Wounds taken just because Vader was pulling his punches and not hitting him when he could and Luke suffered at least three crits if my memory of the fight is right.

Also none of that takes into account that Vader probably has 5 brawn (up a point of two cause of his super cybernetics) with at least 5 points in lightsaber fighting while Luke has maybe 3 brawn and 3 lightsaber skill; Vader - a boat ton of talents and force powers and around 6 force rating while Luke? - maybe a bunch of talents in pilot and some leader style stuff but very few force powers yet and maybe a two Force Rating. And Vader has the Adversary trait that makes him harder to hit along with his armor and any powers that make it harder. Where as Luke left his training even when Yoda told him, you are not ready and Vader will win and your friends might still die. Luke should have died... Vader kept him alive.

By RotJ Luke is a lot tougher but still isn't as good as Vader, in fact watch, he only gains the upperhand (pun fully intended) when he goes all wookiee rage power on Vader and looks like he almost gives into the dark side until he gets his mind back when he sees his father with no hand. Then the Emperor powns Luke, and Vader, even wounded and suffering a few crits probably still is tougher than Luke, taking the Lighting force power in full and chunking the old dude down the pit of death and still he lives long enough for a full on, "I love you son," moment.

I also heard a theory the other day about how Ben says that Imperial stromtroopers are great shots and they are feared accross the galaxy but can't hit the side of a barn when fighting the Heroes on the Death Star... the reason, they were told to let them escape, to fight them but let them get away. And the troopers being brain washed and mostly clones, had no fear of the fact that many of them would die, cause thats what fanatics do, they don't care if they die they follow orders.

On Endor, the Rebels would have lost if not for the Ewoks and all the surprice those guys got hitting the stormtroopers at the start and the traps and Chewie stealling an AT-ST. Leia's crit was not a flesh wound, she would have died if they hadn't won the fight, a lot of Ewoks and rebels did die, and R2 was hit also. I could go on but they only lived because (in game terms) they had a lot of force points on their side and the GM played NPC against NPC (stormtrooper vs. Ewok) way in the PC's favor, and they got really really lucky. It's the same in all the fights in the movies.

I may have missed this but have you actually played the game? This is a game so you will not simulate the movies exactly. They run entirely on rails. Things happen the way they do because they are supposed to. The fight between Luke and Darth? In the game both would probably be on equal footing as Darth's armor and soak would do nothing against the breach quality of the lightsaber in the game. It would come down to their talents and abilities andwhoever got the first good hit in. Kind of like the movie, but it won't always be that way. Combat runs pretty good once you drop some preconceptions that you may have coming in from more tactical systems like d20.

I've got no problem at all with a figure representing health. The wound point/vitality point system simulated something like "plot armor" and in GURPS there are cinematic rules that let you spend excess character points to turn hits into near hits at the expense of your turn and to use fatigue to turn hits into flesh wounds. Stuff like that can turn a gritty combat system cinematic. This game uses very thin cinematic rules and the rest of it isn't realistic. It's just a bloody mess. Chewbacca the sidekick can take a pounding, but heroic Han is gonna drop fast. Not enough armor. What is up with that?

The point is, there are about half a dozen separate mechanics that play into combat beyond success and damage. Then there are the narrative assumptions intended by design. Situational mods, soak, talents, NPC rules, destiny points, modifier results like advantage/threat/triumph/despair, and this is one you can't easily vacuum seal and theory-craft....in-game context.

When you see real, physical damage to the folks on screen, that's almost certainly a Critical Injury (some of which are relatively minor), not just a 'hit'. A normal 'hit', whether it inflicts Wound or Strain damage is mostly the general near-misses, grazing shots, and glancing blows that wear a character down to the point where they are out of the fight.

This.

Wound damage includes minor scrapes, nicks, and, importantly, physically wearing a person down slowly without any large amount of trauma. The critical hits are the more apparent, serious injuries.

Also none of that takes into account that Vader probably has 5 brawn (up a point of two cause of his super cybernetics) with at least 5 points in lightsaber fighting while Luke has maybe 3 brawn and 3 lightsaber skill; Vader - a boat ton of talents and force powers and around 6 force rating while Luke? - maybe a bunch of talents in pilot and some leader style stuff but very few force powers yet and maybe a two Force Rating. And Vader has the Adversary trait that makes him harder to hit along with his armor and any powers that make it harder. Where as Luke left his training even when Yoda told him, you are not ready and Vader will win and your friends might still die. Luke should have died... Vader kept him alive.

Core suggests Brawn OR Agility for Lightsaber. I'm probably going to go with Agility ONLY when the Lightsaber skill becomes available*. It makes so much more sense to me. While Brawn could have a small affect when parrying blows from another Lightsaber, Agility seems to be so much more important. It also could do much to explain a Vader vs. Luke battle. While Vader could have Lightsaber 5, I would suggest his Agility was only a 1. Before you scream bloody murder, think of the injuries he received and his replacement cybernetics. While they increased his strength (Brawn) it appears he is below average in the finesse of his movements. In battle, he plods along, moving slowly. We aren't seeing any of the fast paced twirling lightsaber dance of Anakin any longer. So, if Anakin was Agility 4 and Lightsaber 4, he would be rolling 4 Yellows which is out-standing. As Vader, he is more experienced with the Lightsaber (5), but with only an Agility of 1 he is rolling 4 Green and 1 Yellow. He is still better then Luke (Agility 3 Lightsaber 2?) who could be rolling 1 Green and 2 Yellow, but not by a huge amount.

*If this doesn't set well with you, it could also be explained using FFG's system that Anakin was using Agility with his Lightsaber skill, as Vader (with increased Brawn, reduced Agility) he switched to Brawn with his Lightsaber skill. That could also explain the noticeable difference in his fighting style from Episode III to Episode IV.

*If this doesn't set well with you, it could also be explained using FFG's system that Anakin was using Agility with his Lightsaber skill, as Vader (with increased Brawn, reduced Agility) he switched to Brawn with his Lightsaber skill. That could also explain the noticeable difference in his fighting style from Episode III to Episode IV.

Of course, the *real* cause of the difference in fighting styles between the OT & the PT is a simple one. Lucas originally envisioned the lightsabers as having a strong gyroscopic stabilizing force. That meant they were wielded more like broadswords. Later, likely through the large amount of EU, he came to favor the idea of 'massless blades', which enable the fast, furious, and fancy swordplay we see in the prequels. The fact that those fights look so much more impressive certainly doesn't hurt the transition from the stand point of cinematography.

But, yeah. Once Vader had his cybernetics, his Agility was probably reduced to a 2 (maybe a 3), while his Brawn was boosted to a 4 (maybe even 5). That would trigger a change-over between using Agility and Brawn as your Characteristic of choice with the lightsaber. (By RAW, that would either not be possible, or require a lot of retraining to get back to where you were before the cybernetics. Then again, Vader had *plenty* of time to train.)

Movie characters have the strongest defense in the known galaxy, plot immunity.

This is a fairly lethal system if you're not careful. As a GM I need to think out my fights a bit better then I did in West End. I try to avoid gunfights in large open spaces with nothing to use to break line of sight or take cover. Additionally the characters are actually having to think a bit more and use tactics. It makes things a bit tougher, but so far I'm enjoying it. If I find it growing less enjoyable maybe I'll tweak things a bit.

There are tons of minor tweaks or house rules that could potentially change the feel or lethality of combat.

Of course, the *real* cause of the difference in fighting styles between the OT & the PT is a simple one. Lucas originally envisioned the lightsabers as having a strong gyroscopic stabilizing force. That meant they were wielded more like broadswords. Later, likely through the large amount of EU, he came to favor the idea of 'massless blades', which enable the fast, furious, and fancy swordplay we see in the prequels. The fact that those fights look so much more impressive certainly doesn't hurt the transition from the stand point of cinematography.

But, yeah. Once Vader had his cybernetics, his Agility was probably reduced to a 2 (maybe a 3), while his Brawn was boosted to a 4 (maybe even 5). That would trigger a change-over between using Agility and Brawn as your Characteristic of choice with the lightsaber. (By RAW, that would either not be possible, or require a lot of retraining to get back to where you were before the cybernetics. Then again, Vader had *plenty* of time to train.)

An interesting point if one chooses to regard the EU talk about the "orthodox" fighting styles (which I admittedly usually don't) is that even before the suit, Episodes II/III Anakin was regarded as having more of a "power" style, it's just that the suit pretty much "encouraged" him to rely on it more... after all, added strength, height and reach from the cybernetics.

(For comparison, "agility" style pretty much meant Qui-Gon, Episode I Obi-Wan and Episodes II/III Yoda, while Episode II/III Obi-Wan was "defensive/counter" style. Episodes V/VI Luke is regarded as essentially "power" style in EU descriptions thereof even before he "goes all wookiee rage power" on the second Death Star.)

My 2 cents: All of the cast in EP 4-6 would be PC's. Depending on personal perspective, I'd view each movie as a campagin. Mine tend to average around 700xp +/- a year, so by the end of EP4, luke would have probably gone through Fringer/FSE.

By the Vader fight on Bespin, he'd probably be very heavily into Ace Pilot/(new force path) but Vader is a seasoned Sith Lord.

By the end of RotJ the party ha sprobably accrued around 2000xp, and access to a book we don't posses yet (FaD).

My point being that through play the PC's will eventually develop a wide variety of talent combinations that will significantly increase the difficulty of them being "hit" and/or "taken out". Side Step alone can turn an easy PP check into a RR check at the cost of 2 strain, possibly even more.

I would advise building a few characters, then advancing them with a couple of hundred XP in various directions in order to get a better feel for how the system changes through out play.

Well, that and EotE is about staying out of fights as much as possible. The characters are supposed to exist in the shadows, not stand up and fight toe to toe. sneak around, black mail, calling in favors, heck running into an asteroid field to avoid capture! Those are the types of scenes you'll see in EotE. AoR will be much more marshall, and probably expand on the idea of squad support. But even then, the Rebellion is fighting a guerilla war against the Empire, not a knock down drag out brawl, which they'd would loose heartily. The only reason they managed to take out the Emperor at all had nothing to do with the Alliance military, or even the attack on Endor.

The Emperor was confident in his position and lured them into a trap. In the first half of the Luke/Vader fight, Vader chased him into a corner. When Vader threatened Leia, Luke used his anger (channeled the Dark side) to defeat his father. But Luke refused to turn, the noble sacrifice. The ensuing torture session and pleading from his son eventually redeemed Anakin, but it was that betrayal by his enforcer that really killed Palpatine.

EotE simulates back-alley firefights exceptionally well. Played correctly, few fights will be D&D-style last-man-standing/reduce all the monsters to 0 HP/TPK-fests. Indeed, unlike the forementioned game featuring ironclad murder-hoboes, the PC's here are more likely to be avoiding combat and thus making a break for it once the bad guys fall back.

I will, however, echo the OP's concern regarding interesting lightsaber duels. I'm just going to keep the faith in the Devs for now since they've proven quite capable thusfar.

I'll agree with Lorne... truthbetold it just doesn't feel like a "lightsaber dueling" system, but as we've seen with everything about how they've treated "Jedi" and "lightsabers" to date, that's wholy intentional. The thing is, this also feels like a system optimized for ranged combat, not melee combat, period -- even allowing for the lethality of melee weapons due to vibroweapons with lower (easier) Crit ranges and a tendency towards more dangerous effects like Breach, Pierce, Vicious...

I'm not sure if we actually need "interesting lightsaber duels" -- I still remember the D&D 3E debating over making melee combat work -- but it's something to ask the devs about, whether they plan anything specific for lightsaber duels... it could be as "simple" as special, additional rules for the Lightsaber skill, but then that'd be inconsistent with Melee's lack thereof.