Disruptors are Vicious, not piercing.

So far as I can tell there are no mods for disruptors.

There is no way to add piercing to a disruptor. I suppose you could jury rig it but at the expense of having easy critical hits.

Sure you can activate a critical easily but so what ?

You are absolutely right. Weapons are scary. They kill people. That's what they are designed to do.

As far as I remember only range increasing and Additional Shot Attachments are prohibited for Disruptors, not Damage Increasing ones.

also yes, weapons are scary, even without your interpretation of pierce, event he Holdoutblaster is scary for almost everyone, ecept High-Soak chars, and for those, still everything starting at Normal Blaster Pistols everything is scary, so I don't see a reason for your interpretation, wich has it's logic, but I don't really think it was intended that way.

I also found a passage concering Soak, where it said "Some weapon Wualities MODIFY the soak of the target" in my Copy of EOTE Beta.

If you and your group think they have more fun that way, I wouldn't dare to stop you from playing that way, but I wouldn't like it, because I really hate random deaths.

A deadly system is fine, as long as I have some control over "not trying to die" and don't get the feeling, that it isn't in my hand in any way shape or form, if I die, because the RNG said so.

The problem is when you're fighting things with a ton of soak. Heck my character currently has 10 soak and I really didn't even try. What's a GM to do? Drop a building on me? The way we're playing it I still take damage from pierce weapons and crits. Also the GM doesn't one shot est other characters who are poor combatants.

They worded it very poorly. Ignore doesn't mean reduce. If they wanted pierce to reduce soak they should of stated it like:

Pierce reduces the targets soak to a minimum of 1 or something of that nature.

How the hell did you end up with a soak of 10 for your character, Brawn only adds to soak at character generation, and not after, so increasing your Brawn later with xp, will do nothing for your soak value, only armour. The character with the highest soak is my wookie, which is only 4, since where the hell is he going to find armour, at best some heavy clothing maybe to increase his soak by a further 1.

The problem is when you're fighting things with a ton of soak. Heck my character currently has 10 soak and I really didn't even try. What's a GM to do? Drop a building on me? The way we're playing it I still take damage from pierce weapons and crits. Also the GM doesn't one shot est other characters who are poor combatants.

They worded it very poorly. Ignore doesn't mean reduce. If they wanted pierce to reduce soak they should of stated it like:

Pierce reduces the targets soak to a minimum of 1 or something of that nature.

How the hell did you end up with a soak of 10 for your character, Brawn only adds to soak at character generation, and not after, so increasing your Brawn later with xp, will do nothing for your soak value, only armour. The character with the highest soak is my wookie, which is only 4, since where the hell is he going to find armour, at best some heavy clothing maybe to increase his soak by a further 1.

brawn 4 at creation+superior laminate armor (soak 3, not restricted)+armor master from gadgeteer and you have 8, this is even not so hard on creation.

And still 2-3 good hits with a Blaster Rifle will bring even this one down.

also iirc Soak does increase with increasing brawn. His Wound Threshold don't increase with addional brawn.

The problem is when you're fighting things with a ton of soak. Heck my character currently has 10 soak and I really didn't even try. What's a GM to do? Drop a building on me? The way we're playing it I still take damage from pierce weapons and crits. Also the GM doesn't one shot est other characters who are poor combatants.

They worded it very poorly. Ignore doesn't mean reduce. If they wanted pierce to reduce soak they should of stated it like:

Pierce reduces the targets soak to a minimum of 1 or something of that nature.

How the hell did you end up with a soak of 10 for your character, Brawn only adds to soak at character generation, and not after, so increasing your Brawn later with xp, will do nothing for your soak value, only armour. The character with the highest soak is my wookie, which is only 4, since where the hell is he going to find armour, at best some heavy clothing maybe to increase his soak by a further 1.

Increasing your Brawn with Dedication does increase your soak value page 31 in the rule book. It doesn't increase your wounds.

4 - Brawn

3 - Superior Heavy Battle Armor

1 - Gadgeteer Armor Master Talent

1- Marauder Enduring Talent

1 - Implant Armor

10 soak

Why can't a Wookie wear armor? The Wookie Outlaw Tech/Doctor in my party wears Laminate.

Iwth marauder Enduuring and Impalnt armor I dont really think that you "are not trying"

There is another thread about accumulating soak.

Droid brawn 5 (either from creation or dedication)

Cybernetics +3 (arms (brawn +1), legs (brawn+1), dermal armor) p173 may increase an attribute 1 point past maximum which is seven.

Droid bonus +1 (enduring talent)

Superior Armor +3

(that's 12 already and haven't even started getting exotic with 100 maybe 150 XP spent)

etc.

etc.

In fact this is covered already in another thread.

getting a 14 soak is extra super duper easy. I believe 18 is the max.

THAT is the issue.

There is another thread about accumulating soak.

Droid brawn 5 (either from creation or dedication)

Cybernetics +3 (arms (brawn +1), legs (brawn+1), dermal armor) p173 may increase an attribute 1 point past maximum which is seven.

Droid bonus +1 (enduring talent)

Superior Armor +3

(that's 12 already and haven't even started getting exotic with 100 maybe 150 XP spent)

etc.

etc.

In fact this is covered already in another thread.

getting a 14 soak is extra super duper easy. I believe 18 is the max.

THAT is the issue.

Yup and the way I and few others interpret Pierce damage helps mitigate that issue.

That's not the issue, the issue is having one player with a ton of soak forcing the GM to use powerful weapons which wipes out the rest of the party. Personally, since none of my players look like they are trying to become death machines (it is Star Wars and not D&D) I am keeping this alternative pierce ruling in my back pocket should they ever decide to make combat their primary focus. The way I see it, this game isn't about combat and if the group focuses only on combat they will pay in other ways. That's a lot of XP spent to get that high soak that's not applied to other skills and good luck doing anything but providing setback dice to most social situations.

Plus, having everyone carrying Piercing weapons gets kind of meta and annoying, but as you say, if my group decide to go that way perhaps the laws of my game's physics will change with respect to piercing weapons.

Blaster rifle 10 dam

Superior +1 dam + advantage

Augmented Spin Barrel +3 dam accurate 1 pierce 1

Forarm Grip accurate 1 point blank (Balanced Hilt accurate 2 if you get the weapon Jury rigged)

(Jury rigged +1dam)

14 Damage Pierce 1 and 2 blue dice bevor even considering talents

That is on a hit a minimum of 15 damage

now lets's consider talents:

Point blank: +1 damage on close range

Deadly Accuracy + skill ranks to damage of a skill

so as A Gadgeteer you can get upto 22 damage in close range have pierce 1 and 2 Boost dice and 1 fixed advantage.

Let's say you pick a secon spec:like mercanary soldier.

Two additional Point Blanks and two true aims.

upto 24 Damage on close rage two upgrades on the Skill check and another boost die.

When talking about extremely high soak values, wich can be achived, you have also to talk about the damage that can be put together.

Edit: Even without such stacking: a good hit with a Blaster rifel or Carbine is still easily 14 Damage if the Shooter is decent.

I don't even see ir make a difference in Realy and Scary Combat situations. The only difference it makes is When someine is pointing a very small weapon at oyu wich has piercing modded into it from somewhere.

I still see "Not getting hit at all" as the way better stratgy of survival.

The problem is that not getting hit at all just doesn't happen very often.

Defense is a joke. Black die only have 2 failure sides. At short range you have to count on 1 purple die and at max 4 black die and that's if you tried to max out your defense. That isn't a very good chance of being missed unless you're fighting jabronies.

Honestly the best defense is kill things before they even get a chance to shoot at you.

<<Sorry that was more snarky than I meant - work day has worn my nerves. Sorry>>

The problem is that not getting hit at all just doesn't happen very often.

Defense is a joke. Black die only have 2 failure sides. At short range you have to count on 1 purple die and at max 4 black die and that's if you tried to max out your defense. That isn't a very good chance of being missed unless you're fighting jabronies.

Honestly the best defense is kill things before they even get a chance to shoot at you.

That is kinda true, but a) there are talents to get even more defense

b) i usually roll just a few net successes, wich of course just might be bad luck, a skill wich i am renowedn for in my group :/

Honestly, it sounds like the camp that wants Pierce to equate to "automatic damage" is more worried about extreme edge cases of PCs having deliberately built their Soak Value up to abnormal levels but still want to give the non-combat character with a dinky vibro-knife at least some illusion of having a chance.

On other permutation to this argument... if Pierce does in fact result in automatic damage, would successes rolled on the attack roll count as well towards that damage? After all, one of the core elements of combat is that uncancelled successes on an attack roll = bonus to damage, and if Pierce does a certain amount of automatic damage, then by extension those uncancelled successes should increase the damage from Pierce as well. Throw on the mono-molecular edge attachment, add in the two more ranks of Pierce, and even a measly vibro-knife becomes an incredibly dangerous weapon, and a vibro-ax even more so, since that's another 2 points of assured damage on even a basic success.

Now, if you say that the scenario I've outlined above (uncancelled successes adding to the damage inflicted from Pierce) doesn't apply, then you're twisting one of the core elements of the combat rules to justify the interpretation that Pierce = automatic damage rather than Pierce = reduced Soak Value.

Truthfully though, given how many other elements this game has borrowed from WFRP3e, and being designed by the same guy in both cases, the fact that Pierce (or similarly named weapon quality) in WFRP works by reducing the target's Soak Value before applying the damage (according to Doc the Weasel's post) is a pretty strong indicator that it'd work the same in FFG's Star Wars system.

The problem is that not getting hit at all just doesn't happen very often.

Defense is a joke. Black die only have 2 failure sides. At short range you have to count on 1 purple die and at max 4 black die and that's if you tried to max out your defense. That isn't a very good chance of being missed unless you're fighting jabronies.

Honestly the best defense is kill things before they even get a chance to shoot at you.

That is kinda true, but a) there are talents to get even more defense

b) i usually roll just a few net successes, wich of course just might be bad luck, a skill wich i am renowedn for in my group :/

What talents? Other than Improved Armor Master at the bottom of Gadgeteer and Jury Rig I don't know of any.

Padded armor needed for gadgeteer talent

1 gadgeteer talent

1 jury rig

2 shield gen

4 is the highest.

The thing is, Soak is supposed to be part of the defense for a character so changing Pierce to completely bypass Soak is making the difficulty of defense in the game even worse. Also, I suspect that a player who built a character to be tough in combat, partly by having a high Soak, won't be too happy if a doctor stabs him with a vibroknife and manages to cut off his arm (extreme example)

Honestly, it sounds like the camp that wants Pierce to equate to "automatic damage" is more worried about extreme edge cases of PCs having deliberately built their Soak Value up to abnormal levels but still want to give the non-combat character with a dinky vibro-knife at least some illusion of having a chance.

On other permutation to this argument... if Pierce does in fact result in automatic damage, would successes rolled on the attack roll count as well towards that damage?

In your hypothetical scenario, I think the answer would be no. Since the talent stipulates that you ignore soak equal to the ranks in Pierce, that makes it sufficiently clear that only that much damage is getting through. Therefore, you would apply damage equal to ranks in Pierce to the target first, and then you'd apply damage normally after that, including bonus damage fomr extra successes and reduction from Soak.

Just my two cents of course, and I don'y think this is how it's intended to work, but I'm addressing your specific question as a matter of design discussion.

The thing is, Soak is supposed to be part of the defense for a character so changing Pierce to completely bypass Soak is making the difficulty of defense in the game even worse. Also, I suspect that a player who built a character to be tough in combat, partly by having a high Soak, won't be too happy if a doctor stabs him with a vibroknife and manages to cut off his arm (extreme example)

A perfectly valid point.

As others have illustrated, it takes a pretty dedicated build to get Soak Values above a 10, with the usual average being around a 6 for most characters (Brawn 3 + padded armor or laminate armor or heavy battle armor + Armored Defense). If I were playing a character that had hyper-focused my character build to have an obscenely high Soak Value, I'd be a tad miffed if some putz with a dinky knife could deal damage to me, completely bypassing one of the key tenets of the build.

Honestly, it sounds like the camp that wants Pierce to equate to "automatic damage" is more worried about extreme edge cases of PCs having deliberately built their Soak Value up to abnormal levels but still want to give the non-combat character with a dinky vibro-knife at least some illusion of having a chance.

On other permutation to this argument... if Pierce does in fact result in automatic damage, would successes rolled on the attack roll count as well towards that damage?

In your hypothetical scenario, I think the answer would be no. Since the talent stipulates that you ignore soak equal to the ranks in Pierce, that makes it sufficiently clear that only that much damage is getting through. Therefore, you would apply damage equal to ranks in Pierce to the target first, and then you'd apply damage normally after that, including bonus damage fomr extra successes and reduction from Soak.

Well, if you're already twisting some of the wording in the rules (taking "ignore" to literally mean "ignore the target's Soak Value and deal that much damage") then why not take the extra step in twisting the wording of the rules and have those uncancelled successes actually mean something against those uber-high Soak Value targets?

Here's another permutation, this time regarding Breach. Since Breach operates on the same principles as Pierce (just on a larger scale), would those saying "Pierce = automatic damage" also say that a PC using a Missile Tube or Thermal Detonator or a Lightsaber (all with Breach 1) against a Lambda-class shuttle (Armor 4)? How about against a CR-90 Corvette (Armor 5)? What about an Imperial-class Star Destroyer (Armor 10 according to AoR Beta)? From what some people are arguing, since those weapons have Breach, they'd be able to deal damage to those vessels despite the sheer size differentlal. Not a lot, but it's still damage since each of those weapons has a base damage value that's fully divisible by 10 (20 for missile tube & thermal detonator, 10 for the lightsaber).

Closest instance we have to anything like that in the movies is Luke using his lightsaber to cut open an access hatch on an AT-AT in ESB, which I'd cite more as a case of Luke's player looking to set-up a favorable situation for when he made his check to use the explosive he was carrying.

Or Qui-Gon melting a blast door... the Force could have been assisting with that, but in time, the lightsaber alone would eventually put a hole through the armor.

Still my opinion... the small amount of damage inflicted by the personal scale weapons (designed to damage vehicles thanks to breach) against the hull threshold of the larger vehicles fits. One lightsaber attacking the AT-AT, at 1 damage per successful hit... will take 40 rounds to disable/destroy the walker. And remember, that will never trigger a critical hit. To trigger the crit the amount of damage dealt must exceed the armor. 1 point (2 for a missile tube) getting through thanks to breach, will not exceed the 6 armor of the AT-AT. The extra successes are added to base damage, not wounds/hull trauma inflicted.

Also, I admit after reading these posts (and those @ the d20radio forums) I need to adjust my option 2 formula... Wounds = (Damage - Soak) [minimum of 0] + Pierce/Breach [ maximum of Damage ] because no mater how much pierce/breach a weapon has, it can't do more damage than what was rolled.

@CrimsonDeath

Sorry for unclear wording by me, I didn't mean Talents, that higher the Explicit Dfense Value, but Talenta that Higher the Characters Capability to defend himseld, life Dodge or Dfensive stance for example, wich let you suffer strain, but also add Setback dce to the attackers dicepool.

Or Qui-Gon melting a blast door... the Force could have been assisting with that, but in time, the lightsaber alone would eventually put a hole through the armor.

Still my opinion... the small amount of damage inflicted by the personal scale weapons (designed to damage vehicles thanks to breach) against the hull threshold of the larger vehicles fits. One lightsaber attacking the AT-AT, at 1 damage per successful hit... will take 40 rounds to disable/destroy the walker. And remember, that will never trigger a critical hit. To trigger the crit the amount of damage dealt must exceed the armor. 1 point (2 for a missile tube) getting through thanks to breach, will not exceed the 6 armor of the AT-AT. The extra successes are added to base damage, not wounds/hull trauma inflicted.

Also, I admit after reading these posts (and those @ the d20radio forums) I need to adjust my option 2 formula... Wounds = (Damage - Soak) [minimum of 0] + Pierce/Breach [ maximum of Damage ] because no mater how much pierce/breach a weapon has, it can't do more damage than what was rolled.

When you are writing that the ammount of damage dealt must exceed the armor rating to score a critical hit, but pierce nevertheless goes through all armor, it a) twists the rules even mire and b) still isn't solving in any way thr apparent problem of high soak, because such a character would not really care about 1-2 pierce damage, if this wouln't trigger a Critical Injury.
, because such a character probbaly will also have quite some wound threshold.

The thing is, Soak is supposed to be part of the defense for a character so changing Pierce to completely bypass Soak is making the difficulty of defense in the game even worse. Also, I suspect that a player who built a character to be tough in combat, partly by having a high Soak, won't be too happy if a doctor stabs him with a vibroknife and manages to cut off his arm (extreme example)

EXACTLY !

1. It really prevents players from meta gaming and soak stacking. It really helps keep the arms race in check.

2. When you know you ARE going to take wounds...you try to find ways to not get wounded. (eg. avoid combat)

3. It really adds weight to 'soft skills' like negotiation.

Many Bothans died to bring us this information.

Personally i dont care what the official rules say or not. I love the mechanic of having pierce guarantee a little bit of damage on a hit. Makes my players on edge and always respectful of facing many opponents. As they should.

Its ruthless and dangerous out in the rim, and my players are a rotten bunch of min-maxing muchkins that deserve all the crap coming their way BWHAHAHAhahahahahaha....

Still my opinion... the small amount of damage inflicted by the personal scale weapons (designed to damage vehicles thanks to breach) against the hull threshold of the larger vehicles fits. One lightsaber attacking the AT-AT, at 1 damage per successful hit... will take 40 rounds to disable/destroy the walker. And remember, that will never trigger a critical hit. To trigger the crit the amount of damage dealt must exceed the armor. 1 point (2 for a missile tube) getting through thanks to breach, will not exceed the 6 armor of the AT-AT. The extra successes are added to base damage, not wounds/hull trauma inflicted.

Also, I admit after reading these posts (and those @ the d20radio forums) I need to adjust my option 2 formula... Wounds = (Damage - Soak) [minimum of 0] + Pierce/Breach [ maximum of Damage ] because no mater how much pierce/breach a weapon has, it can't do more damage than what was rolled.

When you are writing that the ammount of damage dealt must exceed the armor rating to score a critical hit, but pierce nevertheless goes through all armor, it a) twists the rules even mire and b) still isn't solving in any way thr apparent problem of high soak, because such a character would not really care about 1-2 pierce damage, if this wouln't trigger a Critical Injury.

, because such a character probbaly will also have quite some wound threshold.

Regarding the critical hit info... a) I'm not twisting any rules. Straight from the book, page 158 for personal weapons... " A Critical Injury can only be triggered on a successful hit that deals damage that exceeds the target's soak value . " And page 243 for vehicle scale... " Remember, an attack's damage also has to exceed a target's armor to deal a Critical Hit, which is important when firing small arms at something using armor instead of soak ."

And b)... You're right. I am not trying to solve a high soak problem with critical injuries. I am only responding with my view on Pierce/Breach vs Soak/Armor. If a high soak character/vehicle wants to ignore the guy slowly wounding him with successful hits that are only able to do a minimal amount of wounds via Pierce/Breach since he can't exceed the Soak/Armor value, fine. After a few rounds of 1-2 (or more) points at a time, he will take notice and have to deal with the little guy. For me, that's enough to solve a high soak/armor issue. I don't need to crit. The "Death by 1000 cuts" will do just fine.

Pierce (Passive)

An attack made with this weapon reduces one point of soak for each rank of pierce. If the weapon has more ranks of pierce than the target's total soak, it completely reduces the target's soak.

But that is not what it states.

This is what it states:

An attack made with this weapon ignores one point of soak for each rank of pierce. If the weapon has more ranks of pierce than the target's total soak, it completely ignores the target's soak.

So crimson may be in the minority, but he is correct.

The key word is ignore: To refuse to take notice of.

If I have 5 Soak, and I ignore 2 points of it, the damage I deal still has to contend with the other 3 points of Soak normally.

Soak 5; Pierce 2; Damage 3

Soak 5 + Pierce 2 (Ignore 2 points of Soak) = Soak 3

Damage 3 vs. Soak 3 = 0 Wounds

Even if the damage from the attack completely and utterly ignores 2 points of Soak, it still has to deal with the *rest* of the Soak normally.

I note that there's a common concern about high soak values. Fair enough - if you spec for that, you can raise it pretty high. But can you raise it higher than the damage output of someone specced to deal damage? Because there are a lot of ways to do that, too.

My Hired Gun took no extra obligation at creation. He's earned around 90xp so far in our campaign, and has 3 Agility and 3 ranks of Ranged (Light). Our Bounty Hunter installed an attachment that adds +1 to his blaster pistol's base damage, and that attachment has a mod that adds another +1 damage. To go along with that, he has 2 ranks in the Point Blank talent, so at short range and weilding just a regular blaster pistol, he's dealing [10 + Successes] base damage. I'm not sure if that's typical for what you guys have seen, but it seems at least on the high end of average, and it didn't really take a lot of money & xp to get there.

If nothing else, it means that when we go up against the occasional high -Soak enemy, we have someone in the group who can take him on.

So maybe Pierce acting to reduce soak is not too bad a thing.