@ Emperor Norton: and the fact that soak is only counted once per attack so 15 damage kills 2 troopers in the group AND that troopers get weaker as they loose minions in the group. Just seems like they OP might be missing something about minions...but of course everyone here has made ample points on this, defending that the players have wrong expectations or have weak weapons or are beginner players, etc, etc, etc... Trooper minions are deadly, but are also fairly easy to damage.

Idk, the one point in the A New Hope where you see stormtroopers going down in one shot, most of the people are using Blaster Rifles pilfered off the stormtroopers they had knocked out.

And a blaster rifle on a hit has a minimum damage of 10 (9+1 success), which means a 5 Soak, 5 Wound stormtrooper would go down with every hit at the LEAST. A good shot, either with lots of success, or with three advantage for a crit, could take out more.

This is very much the solution. The movies don't support Stormtroopers going down to single pistol shots at all, except in some very heroic instances on Endor where you've got experienced protagonists like Han and Leia, IIRC.

Rifles kill Stormtroopers dead. Skilled combatants can do it with pistols, too (3 successes with a Heavy Blaster Pistol will also kill a Stormtrooper). Crits kill Stormtroopers... so long as you're rolling 3 dice or so, you should be doing okay. Also, remember that you damage minions as a group -- so even if you're not quite taking down a trooper per attack, 3 shots from your group should kill 2, which still feels pretty good from my end for guys slinging sidearms against some of the heaviest armor in the setting!

That said, if your players feel like they should be higher up on that heroic scale starting out, by all means, starting with experience won't break the system. I'd just recommend doing the experience in two stages, so you don't see them capping out characteristics with 300 xp to spend "at character creation" or whatever.

Wookies with vibroaxes kill stormtroopers.

Thanks for all the suggestions, guys. Had some email chats with the players and thinking of the next move.

I don't want to upgrade to heavier weapons and armour because the players definitely feel that would go against the 'scoundrels' theme and the movie feel. However, I might look at some early weapon mods to give them a bit more 'punch'. And consider Shadowrun-style 'armour clothing'.

I'm definitely going to start them out with a bit more XP - I don't want them overpowered, but they want to have some 'signature abilities' that make them stand out, a growing reputation and a few successes under their belts. The concepts we're playing with don't lend themselves well to raw Greedo types.

From a GM perspective, I'm not really seeing 'minions' as a danger to the PCs. Minions should exist to pad out the fight scenes with numbers without getting bogged down in book-keeping. Their role is to keel over when the PCs shoot at them. In the movies they drop like flies.

'Rivals' are there to provide a bit of a challenge, to make them work a bit harder, in a fight that the PCs should ultimately expect to win. But they'll have to sweat a bit.

And a 'Nemesis' should be a 'boss fight', where they should have to really employ tactics and non-standard solutions to win. Using the environment, one-shot weapons, support tactics, etc. And they are not booked for a win.

The players understand all that. They're not bothered if a Darth Maul type kicks their ass. They're bothered that minions are doing so. And some of them are having traumatic flashbacks to those 'Solo Soldier' encounters in 4E where 1st level foes had literally hundreds of hit points and fights took hours to resolve.

To be honest, I'd like to run more social encounters and exploring, situations where our scoundrel and our fringer can really shine. But thematically, Star Wars really needs the odd chase or firefight. I don't want it becoming some dumb Michael Bay movie where explosions replace characterisation, but it wouldn't feel like Star Wars without a certain degree of action.

Truthbetold, I'd suggest to your player that starting PCs using the default XP amounts are "raw Greedo types" as why you'd be offering more starting XP as a solution to their concerns thusfar.

I'd also point to one of those other threads re: (allowing? or RAW?) attacks that deal multiple minions' worth of wound damage to down said multiple minions simultaneously in that attack... that's part of the point of a single attack roll not necessarily being a single pull of the trigger, narratively speaking.

If you want to make stormtroopers fall a bit more, I would really be weary of changing up the minion rules in total, it messes with how crits and such work with minion groups. Just lower their soak and or wounds a bit. 3 soak, 5 wounds makes a decent blaster pistol shot take each one out in one shot. (though this breaks the normal brawn + armor soak value thing)

I'm still trying to identify what was going on though. With a blaster pistol, even if every shot was minimum damage, it would take 3 shots to take out one stormtrooper by RAW (5 minimum damage shots would take out 2). But the chances of every shot JUST being minimum damage seems odd. And even with cover, a Stormtrooper isn't going to be difficult to shoot unless you are at a disadvantageous range. And every crit is going to take one out entirely.

Would it be possible for you to run us through a white room example of what was happening. It just feels like there was a disconnect somewhere with the rules.

I like how the characters start off really struggling. Reading through Han Solo series you can see his progression from orphan to low paid pilot etc...he didn't start off as a Hero. He spent years "roughing it", but building a base of experience that would serve him well in episode IV. I think starting off the game as Han Solo hero leaves me with a disconnect with the character...I dont know.

I just think Edge of the Empire screams new beginnings and those dice start to mean a lot when you go from a couple green ones to a fistful of yellow and green. Best game ever as a concept and breaking new ground. Also perhaps the easiest game to solo if that is your thing.

I would just like to say, because I think it's a very important point, that the effectiveness of the Stormtroopers in the movie, with regards to their aim and how quickly they were dispatched, in contrast to their fearsome reputation, should have no bearing on their statistical representation in a game.

Why?

Because the bad guys needed to die quickly and miss the heroes for narrative reasons. An individual unnamed stormtrooper is expendable to the plot. A character with a highly paid actor and a name in the screen-play is not.

But whenever characters talk about the Empire, or it's military, it definitely conveys the fact that Imperial Stormtroopers are a formidable menace.

And there is no direct, literal absolute values to be placed on Star Wars movie characters. You can, of course, you can give them stats, and there's nothing wrong with that, but they didn't have stats in the movies because it's a different medium, and I'm not being snarky here, that's important. I'm not sure I agree that you can watch a scene from Return of the Jedi, assign a character Soak in your head, notice how quickly Leia was able to strangle that character, and then cry foul about the tabletop game. It just doesn't make sense to me.

Stormtroopers are supposed to be threatening. They miss a lot in the movies, and they go down quickly, because they are fighting the heroes. So you have a question: how do I reconcile this? Well, first of all, Stormtrooper minions in the game, in my experience, do go down quickly. But other than that, it stands to reason that eventually, as the heroes in your game become more powerful, these enemies will go down quicker, and miss more often. Han Solo, Leia, Luke, Chewbecca, they don't have XP in the movies. But if you were to put them in your game, maybe you would make them more powerful than beginners. I don't know.

I guess I just want to make the point that Stormtroopers behave the way do in the films because of the needs of the story. On that point, of course, as a GM, one is free to also alter things to fit the needs of the game's story.

I believe that that's where the disconnect lies -- the players want what they believe that they're seeing in the movies, but in EotE the way to "be" what they're seeing in the movies is to be "higher-level" PCs.

As I said, what concerns me is the needs of my players. There are a few systems out there we'd like to try (13th Age has a lot of fans in my group) and some of us had to argue really hard to give EoE a try. Heck, even I needed convincing initially, as there were elements like lack of Jedi I was opposed to.

The main questions that concerned me were 'did you all enjoy that?' and 'did it feel like the movies?'. To which the answer was a guarded 'yes' in both cases, but there's still some uncertainty. That's fine, these are early days, we are all learning a rather radical new system, and there are bound to be things we miss initially.

What's emerged thus far is that they definitely don't want grindy combats, and they definitely want to skip the 'fighting rats in the sewers' part of their adventuring career. They want to be the movie heroes, and I can't blame them for that - the 'Star Wars' movies operate on a grand, epic scale and encourage you to think big. Even given that EoE focuses on the seamier side of the films, they still want to be the hotshot pilots, feared bounty hunters, swaggering scoundrels and would-be future jedi. I don't want them to start out at the Han Solo/Boba Fett level, but before long they are going to be looking at that. They want to fight iconic, badass foes, they want to make a mark.

Believe it or not, one of the main resistances to playing this was the terrible marketing of the WotC version. It showed a bunch of rebel troopers or gungans and said 'what's this guy's story?' To which somebody replied: 'who cares, if it was interesting, they'd have made a movie about it!' While I understand some players (particularly EU fans) might enjoy looking at the 'little people' in the SW universe, my players just didn't want to do that, they wanted to be the Main Event crew. Some of them don't know anything about SW outside the films.

So capturing that 'feel' is important to keeping the players interested. If I don't do that, we'll likely be playing 13th Age or Shadowrun 5.

Your players seem to have a serious disconnect with reality. Have they seen the films?

First of all, the "heroes" run away. All the time. Constantly. Sure they take out a Stormtrooper here and there with one shot with a stolen Stormtrooper blaster rifle but always in a backward manner as they continue to run away. In fact, we don't see the heroes stand and fight until the Battle of Yavin and the Battle of Endor. Every other time they are running.

Every single "iconic, badass foe" is going to have people working under him. You don't just roll into the base and go "Excuse me, I'm looking for your boss, could you kindly point him out for me so that I may be a hero and shoot him?"

Name me one "iconic, badass foe" the characters fought in the movies. Go ahead, I'll give you time to think.

Luke fights Vader at the end of the second movie, and it starts as "epic clash" and quickly turns into "I need to get away".

The heroes "fight" Jabba in the beginning of the third movie.

Luke fights Vader and the Emperor at the end of the third movie.

That's it. The rest of the time was spend running, whining, running, planning, running, hiding with a little bit more running. Adventure, heh.

So where your players are getting this "I want to be an invincible star wars hero who can one shot troopers with my hold out blaster" is literally beyond me. Perhaps a movie night where they watch the movies more then just casual fans. Maybe you need to point out all the times they run away. Turn it into a drinking game. You'll be sloshed by the first movie.

Excitement, heh.

"All his life he looked away, to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was! Hum? What he was doing!"

Your players need to listen to Yoda.

Your players need to listen to Yoda.

I'm pretty sure lecturing the players isn't going to work, they want what they want.

@Maelora: one thing you might do is give them a pretty large XP award after this first session (say, 50XP), and ask them how they would spend it. That might help them boost a characteristic they felt weak in or get some skills into a large enough dice pool to mitigate static conflicts. More dice (specifically, at least three), even if they miss, will also generate more advantages, which can be used to shake things up. That said, shaking things up is the GM's responsibility...hardly anyone else has experienced these static fights so you may need to reflect on how that happened.

If you really want to give starting characters a boat load of XP, it's certainly doable but you'll need to be cautious. I wouldn't allow too much expenditure on Talents, because your group doesn't have enough experience with the system to leverage them properly. Some Talents, like Grit and Toughness, are obvious one-time boosts. For others that mitigate setback dice, their value isn't going to be apparent until the GM nails the difference between difficulty and environmental factors, and uses setback dice frequently. So until your group has more experience with the system, what they're really after is more dice in the pool.

You could do a few things that elevate them to a bit more god-like level:

- allow them to boost a single characteristic from 2 to 4, or two characteristics from 2 to 3, for free

- give them a Talent tree for free, with associated free career skills (lowering their cost)

- give them 50XP to buy more skill ranks

Just be aware that later on it may be hard to reign them in...

I'm pretty sure lecturing the players isn't going to work, they want what they want.

@Maelora: one thing you might do is give them a pretty large XP award after this first session (say, 50XP), and ask them how they would spend it. That might help them boost a characteristic they felt weak in or get some skills into a large enough dice pool to mitigate static conflicts. More dice (specifically, at least three), even if they miss, will also generate more advantages, which can be used to shake things up. That said, shaking things up is the GM's responsibility...hardly anyone else has experienced these static fights so you may need to reflect on how that happened.

If you really want to give starting characters a boat load of XP, it's certainly doable but you'll need to be cautious. I wouldn't allow too much expenditure on Talents, because your group doesn't have enough experience with the system to leverage them properly. Some Talents, like Grit and Toughness, are obvious one-time boosts. For others that mitigate setback dice, their value isn't going to be apparent until the GM nails the difference between difficulty and environmental factors, and uses setback dice frequently. So until your group has more experience with the system, what they're really after is more dice in the pool.

You could do a few things that elevate them to a bit more god-like level:

- allow them to boost a single characteristic from 2 to 4, or two characteristics from 2 to 3, for free

- give them a Talent tree for free, with associated free career skills (lowering their cost)

- give them 50XP to buy more skill ranks

Just be aware that later on it may be hard to reign them in...

Thanks whafrog, that helps. I'd been musing about a few these along these lines.

I don't think it requires "lecturing." It's just a reminder to the players that, sometimes, running away is a viable and highly cinematic option. Old hats at roleplaying can tend develop this "stand and fight, do or die" mentality that bleeds into all their player characters, and so hardly even realize that there's a roleplaying disconnect between them and their characters, between what they'd do in a situation where there is no actual danger to them and what their characters would do in a situation where the danger is very, intensely real.

Various d20 mechanics could be to blame for this, what with un-hittable characters, ridiculous piles of hit points, XP-per-kill mentality, and min-maxing combat gods. Edge of the Empire has none of these.

The beginner game goes so far as to tell the GM straight up that the players are expected to run from the stormtroopers. They are afraid of the stormtroopers. The stormtroopers could turn them into Sullustan jam in short order. And so on.

Just remind them that they are playing characters in a movie setting, and to keep that in mind. Then if some of them still want to stand and fight, roll with it. Perhaps you can increase combat difficulties for them until they get comfortable with running away, picking their fights.

What Whafrog is suggesting seems to be this: "go ahead and overpower your PCs, but be warned that it will be hard later to reign them in." My apologies in advance if I've read this wrong, but I have experienced this exact problem during the Beta phase of this game as well as in previous iterations of Star Wars RPG. When you give the players too much, 1) they are hard to reign in and 2) the game stops being fun because it's no longer challenging. So I would agree with Whafrog; exercise caution when giving your players a big boost right out of the gate.

I don't think it requires "lecturing." It's just a reminder to the players that, sometimes, running away is a viable and highly cinematic option. Old hats at roleplaying can tend develop this "stand and fight, do or die" mentality that bleeds into all their player characters, and so hardly even realize that there's a roleplaying disconnect between them and their characters, between what they'd do in a situation where there is no actual danger to them and what their characters would do in a situation where the danger is very, intensely real.

Various d20 mechanics could be to blame for this, what with un-hittable characters, ridiculous piles of hit points, XP-per-kill mentality, and min-maxing combat gods. Edge of the Empire has none of these.

The beginner game goes so far as to tell the GM straight up that the players are expected to run from the stormtroopers. They are afraid of the stormtroopers. The stormtroopers could turn them into Sullustan jam in short order. And so on.

Just remind them that they are playing characters in a movie setting, and to keep that in mind. Then if some of them still want to stand and fight, roll with it. Perhaps you can increase combat difficulties for them until they get comfortable with running away, picking their fights.

What Whafrog is suggesting seems to be this: "go ahead and overpower your PCs, but be warned that it will be hard later to reign them in." My apologies in advance if I've read this wrong, but I have experienced this exact problem during the Beta phase of this game as well as in previous iterations of Star Wars RPG. When you give the players too much, 1) they are hard to reign in and 2) the game stops being fun because it's no longer challenging. So I would agree with Whafrog; exercise caution when giving your players a big boost right out of the gate.

Exactly.

I'm not trying to lecture. I'm pointing out that Maelora's players seem to think they should start out like Boba Fett. Well fine if that's the way you want to play, but good luck challenging them. One Boba Fett is hard enough to take down. 4 or 5? Good luck.

At some point the power creep is going to get so bad, you'll toss minions aside completely, because you'll need several nemesis level NPC's with the rivals now acting like Minions to challenge them. It's like running a Monty Hall campaign in D&D. Sure its fun for the first few sessions. But it starts to wear on everyone after a while. The players get bored of not being challenged in any way, and the GM gets tired of trying to think of harder and harder encounters.

awayputurwpn hit on it exactly. Old hats at RPGs (especially of the power gaming variety) get this superiority complex where they fear nothing and no one. Enemy has a well placed ambush and offers the players to surrender? No problem draw those weapons, not drop, and fight through it. It's only HP. And if we die we can rez!!!

The problem with this line of thinking is it has become so ingrained in how many of us do things RP wise it is ruining an entire section of story. Why do we love Star Wars? Its because the rebels are a lovable underdog. Not perfect, not powerful by any stretch of the imagination, and vastly out gunned. How do you handle that situation? Under most RP groups, its "Never tell me the Odds" and draw guns and stand and fight in the open. How do the characters in the movies we love handle that situation? They run. They hide. They plan. They strike at the edges until they have enough information to make that killing blow. Only then do they stand and fight.

The getting away can be just as dramatic as the fight scene or the chase. Empire has a great getting away scene when Han takes the Falcon in the asteroid belt. It is all in how you paint the picture.

But in order for all of this to happen, the players need to understand they aren't invincible. Allowing them to be so only creates more work for you, the GM, in the end.

If you want to make stormtroopers fall a bit more, I would really be weary of changing up the minion rules in total, it messes with how crits and such work with minion groups. Just lower their soak and or wounds a bit. 3 soak, 5 wounds makes a decent blaster pistol shot take each one out in one shot. (though this breaks the normal brawn + armor soak value thing)

I'm still trying to identify what was going on though. With a blaster pistol, even if every shot was minimum damage, it would take 3 shots to take out one stormtrooper by RAW (5 minimum damage shots would take out 2). But the chances of every shot JUST being minimum damage seems odd. And even with cover, a Stormtrooper isn't going to be difficult to shoot unless you are at a disadvantageous range. And every crit is going to take one out entirely.

Would it be possible for you to run us through a white room example of what was happening. It just feels like there was a disconnect somewhere with the rules.

I would like to reiterate this. ^

Can you give us details of the weapons the PCs are using and a more in-depth explanation of the scenario as it happened?