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.

Damage will always be superior to soak/defense.

Deadly Accuracy + 5

Point Blank/Barrage +3

Augmented Spin Barrel +3

Superior +1

Jury Rig +1

That's +13 damage on top of whatever Rifle you put it on.

Imagine that on the Heavy Repeating Blaster... 28 damage before successes....with Auto-Fire....

Damage will always be superior to soak/defense.

Then why do you need Pierce to do what you interpret it as doing?

I'd agree that pierce damage = auto damage, but no crits. I feel in this game, narrative trumps rules. The rule is contested in this case, but it doesn't make sense to me to nerf the vibroknife. All weapons should be dangerous, especially the vibro ones, considering the description and the cost. Unless their target is sealed in a carbonite block, a skilled operator should be able to stab a joint or weak point in the armor. In real life, a knife attack has much more force behind it than a bullet. That's why stab proof vests exist and are different that bullet proof vests.

However, I don't think it should be automatic. Pierce should be a active quality, not passive, based on the narrative system.

On the other hand, if you're going for simplicity, the title of the quality indicates the attack pierced the armor.

@bren

I don't see the "death by a thousand cuts" woking, when not facing many opponents.

In a one on one situation, or even in a one on two situation, where the opponents have Pircing ligh blasters, versus the walking fortress with a rifle, the Fortress would probably blast them into oblivion in short time, if the opponents doesn't also have absurd Soak values, because he is dealing probably about 6 to 10 times the damage they are dealing combined.

@cody

I would like an aiming mechanic for that a lot better.

That you add Setback dice, or upgrade the difficulty of the roll, to Bypass the armor completely, by activly aiming for the joint.

Damage will always be superior to soak/defense.

Deadly Accuracy + 5

Point Blank/Barrage +3

Augmented Spin Barrel +3

Superior +1

Jury Rig +1

That's +13 damage on top of whatever Rifle you put it on.

Imagine that on the Heavy Repeating Blaster... 28 damage before successes....with Auto-Fire....

Which is also a very expensive set-up, both in terms of credits and especially in terms of XP, since to get all those talents you've got to do a fair amount of career-hopping (which gets progressively more expensive) and buy other talents that have nothing to do with damage.

Plus, one good Sunder attack (3 Advantage) means that weapon is out of commission, with a 4th Advantage wrecking it completely. Good bye suped-up heavy repeating blaster.

It actully doesn't need that much carrer Hopping.

All those talents are in the Gadgeteer Tree. (Barrage not, but Point Blank once)

also the most expensive mod there is the Superior for 5k

The Spin Barrell is 1750+200 for mods

Sling 250 cred +100 for point blank mod

A Blaster Rifle is 900 creds

Jury Rig can be applied to another Item if your Item is destroyed.

So we all agree that damage can be ramped up way beyond any sak value.

Why is high soak a problem again?

Well, to play devil's advocate against myself for a second, I can see the argument that high soak is a nuisance for the Doctors, Politicos, Scouts etc of the game. Not everyone is able to deal high damage, after all.

But as I said, I was able to build a character that can do good damage without having to sink a lot of resources into it.

Anyway, apologies for taking things of track a bit. The discussion should be about Pierce and Breach, not the dangers of high soak. That's another thread. I made that point mainly to illustrate that I'm not sure there is a *need* for Pierce to totally ignore Soak.

only that doctors can ignore soak.

Also why should every one even should be able to put out high numbers of damage?

Fighters are for fighting, Politicos fopr talking, and Doctors are for stiching people up.

I also don't think there is any need for this interpretation, and since you need more explanation why and how pierce and breach works and interacts with other rules when it comes to the always go through faction, I stay with Ockhams Razor and say, sipler is better.

For non-damage dealing characters, maybe htye can use other skills during combat which lead to the damage dealers getting boosts, or the enemies getting setbacks. Remember, you can stack multiple boosts and setbacks. Non damage dealers, if played creatively, could cause the enemies to consantly miss.

For non-damage dealing characters, maybe htye can use other skills during combat which lead to the damage dealers getting boosts, or the enemies getting setbacks. Remember, you can stack multiple boosts and setbacks. Non damage dealers, if played creatively, could cause the enemies to consantly miss.

Absolutely. They can also use the assist actions to make their fighting-specced comrades even deadlier, or mop up minions while the fighters focus on the boss. There's a lot they can do.

In my game one of my characters is a bodyguard with a soak of 10 I believe. In one of the published adventures a combat against several pirates didn't reall pose any threat to him. So I modified some of the future encounters with some more "meat" in them. I created 3 large combat droids that had weapons similiar to the SuperBattle droids from EP1-3, blaster rifles with the linked ability. After 3 or 4 rounds of combat said character had about 3 wounds left and ordered a tactical retreat. Soak isn't really a problem.

As to the OP: We are currently playing that Pierce reduces Soak on a point for point basis. No one's felt like they weren't combat capable, but they haven't been fighting many high soak adversaries either.

Right now we are also using it as "automatic damage". So it reduces Soak and also sets a minimum damage value for times when the target's Soak is high enough to ignore it.

Though, we haven't really had a corner-case situation arise yet where this has been a significant factor.

For me the problem I find in games based on a soak mechanic (like EotE and Warhammer 3) is, that if soak rises too much for PCs, the game can lose some charm or consistency.

I can picture a situation where experienced PCs are not scared of facing a legion of Stormtroopers because they have staked soak up to 10+ and they know they are virtually immune to their blaster fire. I don't feel this is right. But this is onlymy taste.

For us this issue came up early.

Long arm of the Hutt (part 2 of the introductory adventure).

Now you are supposed to talk down and blackmail Teemo the Hutt...BUT.

so Teemo has 10 soak and a wound threshold of 30.

The characters were armed with blaster pistols, a couple of blaster rifles and a few of the vibro axes they took off the guards.

When the Wookie marauder was wailing away on teemo with a vibro axe and not causing any damage with the bulk of his attacks....It really didn't feel right.

( 4 brawn +3 damage, 2 pierce, 1Y 3G for attack dice )

The other characters

( 2 brawn, +3 damage, 2 pierce, 2G attack dice) literally did nothing.

I mean a big slimy Hutt getting chopped with a vibro ax and not being injured by it....

So we re-did the fight again using attacks where pierce would cause damage on a successful attack. The outcome was still gruesome but at least the players felt like they actually stood a fighting chance.

Bulky hutt slugs laughing off ax-blows seems thematically appropriate to me. Perhaps if the party wanted to kill the hutt, they should've figured out a better plan than a straight up fight?

Soak seems completely fine. Yes, some characters will have higher values than others, possibly including some very high values. But the easier way to increase your survivability is to get crazy damage output. (Dead adversaries doing zero damage, which is easily soaked up.) The game readily facilitates this, and no one seems to have a problem with it.

Also, the high soak character probably isn't the doctor. So, if adversaries are a reasonable threat to other characters in the party, then even if the high soak PC is guaranteed to survive, the party might find itself in a very bad way if they don't manage combat carefully.

This is basically how a class-based system is supposed to work. Some characters may be very adept in surviving combat. A GM shouldn't feel obligated to take away that character's "thing" any more than he or she feels obligated to take away a sniper's ability to dish out damage, a pilot's ability to escape in a chase, or a mechanic's ability to hold the ship together under extreme duress. Surviving combat isn't winning the game.

Like Pierce, Soak is not a problem. If you think it is, you are focusing too narrowly on one facet of combat, which itself is only one aspect of the overall game.

Also, the high soak character probably isn't the doctor. So, if adversaries are a reasonable threat to other characters in the party, then even if the high soak PC is guaranteed to survive, the party might find itself in a very bad way if they don't manage combat carefully.

Not only that, later on a doctor might have "higher" Soak due to equipment gains, maybe enough to mostly cancel a vibro-knife...but both he and the merc will still suffer the death-by-1000-cuts at the same rate . Seems unfair to the merc who invested in all that.

Not only that #2, this is nothing like, say, D20, where by level 7 or higher you were pretty much immune to lowly stormtroopers. But I'm sure nobody complained and had a death-by-1000-cuts for that.

Like Pierce, Soak is not a problem. If you think it is, you are focusing too narrowly on one facet of combat, which itself is only one aspect of the overall game.

Agreed. A high Soak target would make a great session for a spy/poisoner. A little outside-the-box thinking helps.

I fully believe that pierce is meant to basically just add points of damage against characters with soak.

I don't play it that way though. We go with the lesser supported ignore rule.

High soak is not hard to achieve, and many enemies have fairly high soak. A basic Hutt has 10 soak. Unless you have a vibro ax and a lot of skill, or an incredibly powerful blaster, chances are you won't be doing much damage if any. Having pierce land the first point or two of damage gives players the ability to wittle down a target with high soak.

It's not hard to min/max a starting character with 6+ soak. Heck, 8+ for a droid is pretty easy. Pierce gives the option to still be dangerous to a high soak value without being crazy powerful against all other characters.

To us, the ignore route just works better. All in all, over 8 sessions, this rule has only become important in 1 instance, so honestly, play it how you like it.

In my game, the group took care of the Hutt in a more diplomatic way, but I was concerned about what would happen if they should happen to fight him. I was going to encourage those with less chance of doing damage to use the Assist maneuver to give the wookie boost dice (ie, they still shot at the Hutt but distracted him more than harming him so the wookie could take advantage). With those extra dice, the odds that he could do more than 8 damage (10 Soak - 2 Pierce) went up as did the odds of rolling 2 or more advantages to trigger a crit. Given the axe already has +20 on the Crit tables, every extra pair of advantages could be used to increase the crit by +10 (p158) I feel that the odds of the wookie hitting, doing damage, and causing a decent Crit wouldn't be too bad (with the other 3 shooting away Assisting).

We are doing LAotH next session and I was considering lowering Teemo's soak to 5 and increasing WT to 40 to give the party a fighting chance if they want to confront him directly.

Let's also consider that this interpretation of Pierce and Breach only matter if the attack normally wouldn't do enough damage to inflict any wounds beyond their soak or armor. In all other cases, both interpretations work fine.

I just don't see how, in most cases, someone getting hit with a vibro-axe does absolutely no damage. It seems silly, even if they are rather tanky.

And I dunno, thermal detonators, lightsabers, and missile tubes are some serious hardware. Not even a Star Destroyer should be completely immune to their destructiveness, and given enough of them, or enough time, I think it is reasonable that they could do damage (say, 1 a round) to them. It would still take a ludicrously large amount of time to do anything reasonable to it, but I don't see anything broken about that.

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.

Wow, I'm glad my players are focussing on the story and not meta-gaming their characters, this vicious circle only escalates, if not the soak, then the weapons basically forcing the other players to keep on par.

Well I guess there are a lot of newbies out there that still get a kick out of building tanks or killing machines, and its nice to see that the game also supports these types of players.

I guess the bottom line is how far the Gamesmaster is willing to allow his players to unbalance things, unless of course he started it

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.

Wow, I'm glad my players are focussing on the story and not meta-gaming their characters, this vicious circle only escalates, if not the soak, then the weapons basically forcing the other players to keep on par.

Well I guess there are a lot of newbies out there that still get a kick out of building tanks or killing machines, and its nice to see that the game also supports these types of players.

I guess the bottom line is how far the Gamesmaster is willing to allow his players to unbalance things, unless of course he started it

Who said I don't roleplay or have other game skills besides combat ones? My group has played 3+ times a week for over 2 months now. I have over 300xp spent. Yes I focused mostly on combat as that was my role in the group. I kill/tank, the Mechanic fixes/makes stuff and the Thief is the Face of the party. We each have a role and do them well.

Also why is it such a negative thing if a player wants to be great at something? Is everyone supposed to be a jack of all trades but good at nothing?

Like I said before what if one of your players had 6 presence and took all talking skills? Would that player not be allowed to do so? Would that be game breaking?

BTW, I just got an answer from Sam though I don't think that it will change anyone's mind. For the record, option A in my email was pierce subtracting from the soak value. Here's the email:

Simply put, soak works as you have described in option A. To clarify, Pierce and Breach reduce soak before damage is applied for the purposes of the single attack. So a weapon with Pierce 1 that does 10 damage to a target with 3 soak would do 8 damage to the target. The same weapon that does damage to a target with 11 soak would do no damage

So that's RAI (and RAW really.... )

Good to know I've played it right. My poor melee dood is going to face some real tough challenges unless he figures a way to boost his damage output, him and his vibro rapier....

Glad that's settled, thanks for sharing the email.