Pierce and Breach don't force damage through Soak, they just allow you to ignore their respective amounts of Soak.

If you use a Missile Tube, and deal 20 damage to a vehicle with Armor 4, then the Breach reduces that to Armor 3, and your damage of 20 becomes 2 on ship scale, meaning it is completely negated by the Armor.

If you have soak 20 and get hit for 10 by a vibro knife which has pierce 2 you take 2 damage.

If you have soak 20 and get hit for 10 by a vibro knife which has pierce 2 you take 2 damage.

No. Pierce increases the likelyhood of doing damage on a successful hit, but it doesn't guarantee it.

Pierce reads as follows:

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. For example, Pierce 3 against a soak of 2 ignores 2 points of soak, but the extra "point" of Pierce has no further effect.

If you have a Soak of 5, and get hit for 4 damage with a weapon with the Pierce 2 quality, you take 1 point of damage.

5 Soak - 2 Pierce = 3 Soak

4 Damage - 3 Soak = 1 Damage

If you (somehow) have Soak 20, and get hit for 10 damage with a weapon with the Pierce 2 quality, you still take no damage.

20 Soak - 2 Pierce = 18 Soak

10 Damage - 18 Soak = 0 Damage

If you have soak 20 and get hit for 10 by a vibro knife which has pierce 2 you take 2 damage.

No. Pierce increases the likelyhood of doing damage on a successful hit, but it doesn't guarantee it.

Pierce reads as follows:

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. For example, Pierce 3 against a soak of 2 ignores 2 points of soak, but the extra "point" of Pierce has no further effect.

If you have a Soak of 5, and get hit for 4 damage with a weapon with the Pierce 2 quality, you take 1 point of damage.

5 Soak - 2 Pierce = 3 Soak

4 Damage - 3 Soak = 1 Damage

If you (somehow) have Soak 20, and get hit for 10 damage with a weapon with the Pierce 2 quality, you still take no damage.

20 Soak - 2 Pierce = 18 Soak

10 Damage - 18 Soak = 0 Damage

While the standard interpretation of Pierce and Breach would render your comment true, I saw a discussion on this board somewhere that suggested interpreting the weapon qualities a little closer.

They both say that they IGNORE soak equal to their various ratings, right? Well, what if that means that that damage truly IGNORES it, and can go right through?

If your damage was greater than their soak , it would work as normal. 10 damage to a dude with 5 soak does 5 normally, but if the weapon had Pierce 2 it would do 7.

However, if your damage was LESS than their soak , then damage equal to the Pierce rating could sneak through and possibly still crit if the attack is successful. So, if I was fighting a dude with 10 soak and I did 5 damage, nothing would happen. But, if my weapon had Pierce 2, 2 of my 5 damage IGNORES soak , so he still takes two damage and I can maybe score a crit with advantages.

I like this for a few reasons.

1. It says ignores soak , not reduces.

2. It doesn't make high soak high brawn high wound characters omfgroflstompOP and lets them have a weakness besides just strain damage.

3. It allows for a "Death by 1000 Cuts" strategy for people using weapons that might not deal a lot of damage, and it allows players and NPCs better deal with walking tanks.

4. It allows Lightsabers, Thermal Dets, and Missile Tubes to damage vehicles with Breach, since all of those weapons have been shown to be effective against vehicles in media (Luke vs. At-At, etc.) You wouldn't deal a lot of hull damage, but you can score critical hits, which are truthfully more important when facing vehicles anyways. It also adds to the deadliness of these weapons, which I think is very important.

I will be using this in all of my games because it makes everything way better and more balanced, and I almost feel like that's how the Devs wanted it to be played as. If not, then I am anyways!

Taken from a thread I started back in early Aug.

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/87233-highest-pc-soak-value/?hl=%20highest%20%20possible%20%20soak

I do see the Point of Crimson, especially due to the Lightsaber, wich does only one damage on starship Scale with breach 1, so that you would need a lot of net successes to actually damage anything.

But, if it where so, I don't really get why there would be Vreach besides Pierce on Small weapons anyway.

with this interpretation, you can wear down any vehivle with a handblaster, modded to have pierce, although it might take a lot of time.

How is Human Scaled Weapons vs Starship Scaled Vehicles handled anyway?

Is the damage divided by ten before or after the net successses? (I dont have the Rulebook at hand righ now)

Yeah, this was an old discussion during the EotE Beta period.

Crimson's view was in the tiny minority since it relied on an extremely literal reading of the rules, where the majority folks (self included) went with what Voice stated and that Pierce and Breach simply reduce the target's Soak Value prior to applying damage, which also means that it ignores that many points of the target's Soak Value when calculating how much damage gets applied to the target.

Urd,

I believe the common stance is "apply successes for damage, and then divide by 10" when comparing a character scale weapon to a vehicle-scale target. Which means that in most instances, those extra successes aren't going to amount to much in the way of additional damage.

The Voice is correct on this one. Don't try to be too literal in the interpretation. If you notice the size of Voice's explanation versus Crimson's, that is telling. This system was designed to be as simple as possible.

This system was designed to be as simple as possible.

Precisely.

Much like Saga Edition, this system is best served by following the K eep I t S imple S tupid principle, or K.I.S.S. If there's a simple answer and an overly complicated answer, the vast majority of the time your best answer is the simple one.

Do we have an official designer clarification on this? I'd like one, because both sides have, in my iew, equally valid interpretations.

^{Yeah, I'd like one too. Maybe I can figure out how to ask the Support people.}

^{Edit: Ok, submitted the question to Customer Service.}

^{Edit: Immediately got this response back:}

I will be out of the office until September 3rd. Thanks for your patience; I'll be sure to get back to you as soon as possible.

Sam Stewart

I had just assumed it was some peons fielding the questions, not the lead producer

Do we have an official designer clarification on this? I'd like one, because both sides have, in my iew, equally valid interpretations.

Equally valid? Can't say I agree with that. Equally logical maybe, but that's not the same thing. I can see the logic of Crimson Death's interpretation, if you took everything else out of context and twisted semantics to mean what you want. Once you consider that CD's interpretation basically means auto-damage on success, you have to ask if that's what the designers intended, and I can't think of a good reason why they would. The heaviest battle armour in the galaxy won't save you from a pinprick from a vibroknife. That kind of conclusion doesn't see very valid to me.

True. Hopefully getting an official answer that can be pointed at when this comes up will be useful in the future. Personally I have always used The Voice's interpretation

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 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.

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.

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'm attacking with a weapon with pierce 2, I'm ignoring 2 points of soak. If I hit a target with 10 soak, I ignore, refuse to take notice of, 2 of the 10. So I still take notice of 8 soak. Meaning, any attack that does 8 or less damage is ignored due to soak.

I agree with Voice's interpretation.

-EF

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'm attacking with a weapon with pierce 2, I'm ignoring 2 points of soak. If I hit a target with 10 soak, I ignore, refuse to take notice of, 2 of the 10. So I still take notice of 8 soak. Meaning, any attack that does 8 or less damage is ignored due to soak.

I agree with Voice's interpretation.

-EF

Glad you posted this. I've been sitting here trying to think how to word that (I shouldn't reply to stuff 10 minutes before I go to sleep).

Another reason I go with the above is that in the Beginner's Box (while obviously not the source for final rules decisions) it uses the same wording for pierce as in the final book. Ignore and all. However, on the character sheet for the character Lowhhrick, the vibro-axe specifically states "Pierce 2: Target's soak reduced by 2 against this attack."

For me that shows the devs intent for the weapon characteristic.

Yeah, I was entertaining the other interpretation in case of soak issues, but as pointed out in those threads weapon damage can vastly outstrip soak so there are ways around it. If my group gets frustrated with soak I will suggest this interpretation to see what they want to do

Well, hopefully we'll get an official reply and we can all get on the same page with it.

Do we have an official designer clarification on this? I'd like one, because both sides have, in my iew, equally valid interpretations.

Equally valid? Can't say I agree with that. Equally logical maybe, but that's not the same thing. I can see the logic of Crimson Death's interpretation, if you took everything else out of context and twisted semantics to mean what you want. Once you consider that CD's interpretation basically means auto-damage on success, you have to ask if that's what the designers intended, and I can't think of a good reason why they would. The heaviest battle armour in the galaxy won't save you from a pinprick from a vibroknife. That kind of conclusion doesn't see very valid to me.

Well, i'd rather know what the designers intended than guess at it. Hopefully we'll get a clear, official answer.

This rulebook should have been written in Simplified Technical English to avoid such discussions .

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'm attacking with a weapon with pierce 2, I'm ignoring 2 points of soak. If I hit a target with 10 soak, I ignore, refuse to take notice of, 2 of the 10. So I still take notice of 8 soak. Meaning, any attack that does 8 or less damage is ignored due to soak.

I agree with Voice's interpretation.

-EF

So lets take a look at that example.

If I'm attacking with a weapon with pierce 2, I'm ignoring 2 points of soak. If I hit a target with 10 soak, I ignore, refuse to take notice of, 2 of the 10. So I still take notice of 8 soak . Meaning, any attack that does 8 or less damage is ignored due to soak.

(the red is incorrect)

You forgot to ignore the soak value.

When you apply the 2 pierce damage it is applied as if the soak value never existed.

So you are not ignoring 2 points of soak value, you are ignoring the soak value completely and then applying damage up to the pierce value of the weapon. (2 in this example).

EDIT: (for clarity hopefully)

You can also think of it this way.

All piercing damage is applied first.

Since piercing damage ignores soak (all of it) those points of damage are dealt up to the pierce value.

Then the remaining damage is applied however the soak value is no longer ignored and is instead applied.

It doesn't say you ignore soak completely for the pierce damage, just one point per point of pierce. Seems like you are saying in your second part to ignore all the soak

It doesn't say you ignore soak completely for the pierce damage, just one point per point of pierce. Seems like you are saying in your second part to ignore all the soak

Just for the X piercing damage and the X piercing damage only.

OK, but the first part of your post you seem to be saying to subtract it from the soak and any attack less than 8 doesn't do any damage.

I think I know what you are trying to say, just wanted to make sure.

You know, I actually hope we do get an official answer from Sam, if only to put this discussion to bed once and for all