this game is way too lethal. I don't like the stimpacks defense either; show me once in the original trilogy where Luke or Han or whatever had to stop in the middle of a fight to put a stimpack on. I like the new game, but if you ask me some update of the rules should be down the road and address this.

I don't find combat too lethal at all. Its just fine the way it is. PC's don't become gods of war, slaughtering through ranks of stormtroopers. If you watched the original trilogy, you would have noticed they spend most of their time running away from combats.

this game is way too lethal. I don't like the stimpacks defense either; show me once in the original trilogy where Luke or Han or whatever had to stop in the middle of a fight to put a stimpack on. I like the new game, but if you ask me some update of the rules should be down the road and address this.

Cannot tell if serious.

The other idea, the EOTE author thought about at first, is to make opposed check in combat so it grows higher with xp too. But that would probably be a problem with the Damage system depending on the number of uncancelled successes.

Don't know if you played it, but WEG actually did something like this with Star Wars when they had the license. If you played it exactly as the book said it worked pretty well. In typical combat at short and sometimes medium ranges it could help you out (or give you an arrow to the knee) and at all ranges you could actively use it to do things like avoid hits while running across an open area.

Unfortunately it wasn't well explained in the book, so only really really really sharp GMs actually did it right. Most did it wrong so it usually came out rather OPed. By comparison Edge is a lot more user friendly.

The other idea, the EOTE author thought about at first, is to make opposed check in combat so it grows higher with xp too. But that would probably be a problem with the Damage system depending on the number of uncancelled successes.

Don't know if you played it, but WEG actually did something like this with Star Wars when they had the license. If you played it exactly as the book said it worked pretty well. In typical combat at short and sometimes medium ranges it could help you out (or give you an arrow to the knee) and at all ranges you could actively use it to do things like avoid hits while running across an open area.

Unfortunately it wasn't well explained in the book, so only really really really sharp GMs actually did it right. Most did it wrong so it usually came out rather OPed. By comparison Edge is a lot more user friendly.

Thanks for your answer. Indeed I'm a long time Starwars RPG player, like a lot of people here : WEG 1st and 2nd by raw, WOTC 1st and RCR edition with spacecombat houserules and SAGA quite by raw.

this game is way too lethal. I don't like the stimpacks defense either; show me once in the original trilogy where Luke or Han or whatever had to stop in the middle of a fight to put a stimpack on. I like the new game, but if you ask me some update of the rules should be down the road and address this.

I see your point.

Do you have a house rule in your game against stimpacks? If so, how does that work for your games?

Since it doesn't come up in the movies, and my players aren't too knowledgable about the EotE/AoR system, the often times forget that stimpacks exist so they rarely use them anyway.

Oh, that guy was serious? "It didn't happen like that in the movie" isn't a reason for a rule to be bad. Retroactively imposing game mechanics on a cinematic experience is pointless, IMO.

Also noting that the OP hasn't responded to any of the questions about how his game was running when he deemed it too lethal. Methinks he/his players just weren't aware of the VAST amount of mechanical options available to give both sides in a gunfight a better shot at survival.

Oh, that guy was serious? "It didn't happen like that in the movie" isn't a reason for a rule to be bad. Retroactively imposing game mechanics on a cinematic experience is pointless, IMO.

Well, I have to say that I partially agree with him. I mean, this is a rpg based in the Star Wars universe, which most iconic source for inspiration are the movies. As such I think his point is quite valid. Imagine for example that the designers decide to include a rules section for martial arts, it can be a fantastic mechanic but iconic for star wars...?

What I mean is that I can understand that if in his games PCs are all the time injecting stimpacks like drug addicts, well indeed it does not feel very Star Wars.

Said that, as I commented, for me the lethality is good enough and I don't care about my players being stimpack addicts, but this is probably because I am not a super SW fan.

I think it's important for a system to provide a quick-fix in-combat healing option, even if that option is suboptimal to out-of-combat options.

Oh, that guy was serious? "It didn't happen like that in the movie" isn't a reason for a rule to be bad. Retroactively imposing game mechanics on a cinematic experience is pointless, IMO.

Also noting that the OP hasn't responded to any of the questions about how his game was running when he deemed it too lethal. Methinks he/his players just weren't aware of the VAST amount of mechanical options available to give both sides in a gunfight a better shot at survival.

yeah, actually I am serious! I think if you're making a game that's based on a movie, it ought to feel like the movie. This feels like the movie except for the fact that the heroes are getting shot constantly! That being said, I don't think they need to amend much. The game is too lethal for my tastes, but usually it feels all right. There's a sense of desperation and nobody is a combat god or anything.

Is it the heroes being in actual mortal peril makes it feel less like a movie? Or the fact that they can actually be hit by enemies, which occurs relatively infrequently in the Original Trilogy?

it's the fact that, no matter how skilled they are, they can still be hit by enemies... and by "still be hit" I really mean "get hit constantly" which is not the right feel in my opinion. I've used the full rules too.

Han Solo in the films, for example, would be next to impossible to depict in this game. He wears no armor (probably just heavy clothing) and may have a brawn of 3 tops... he may have destiny to help him out or cover. I'd say he's good enough with his blaster pistol to dust off at least one minion per round. Add it all up and I don't believe there's a way he survives Return of the Jedi in this game . He gets shot twice and he's done. Unless he uses stim packs maybe... which no one ever did in the movies. He might have suffered the nicks and scrapes that being wounded entails, but does he ever actually get shot? No. Come on, this game could use some improvement. It's too lethal.

I think it's the whole getting hit thing.

That said, the characters in the original films get Critted nine times over the course of three movies IIRC (R2-D2 in ANH, 3PO and Luke x2 in ESB, and Luke x2 R2 and Leia in ROTJ). Note I'm only counting what Vader did to Luke in ESB as one.

But also thinking about it... Leia and R2 get stunned in ANH possibly 3PO too, Obi-Wan gets killed (though I don't know if that really counts) Chewie chokes Lando pretty good in ESB and I'm sure there's probably one more I'm forgetting.

So actually the game isn't that far off depending on how you play...

it's the fact that, no matter how skilled they are, they can still be hit by enemies... and by "still be hit" I really mean "get hit constantly" which is not the right feel in my opinion. I've used the full rules too.

Han Solo in the films, for example, would be next to impossible to depict in this game. He wears no armor (probably just heavy clothing) and may have a brawn of 3 tops... he may have destiny to help him out or cover. I'd say he's good enough with his blaster pistol to dust off at least one minion per round. Add it all up and I don't believe there's a way he survives Return of the Jedi in this game . He gets shot twice and he's done. Unless he uses stim packs maybe... which no one ever did in the movies. He might have suffered the nicks and scrapes that being wounded entails, but does he ever actually get shot? No. Come on, this game could use some improvement. It's too lethal.

Check one of my previous posts in this thread. I get the feeling that the designers envisioned WT as more of a pad and Crits as being actual real wounds. I know, they don't describe it that way, but considering how much trouble people are having with the skills and space combat ans such I don't blame them. If they made the WT some kind of Vitality Point thing like in previous editions people would want to lump it in with strain, which is really something else.

That's because Plot Armor doesn't exist in the game as it does in the movies. R2-D2 gets shot and fried with what would be the mechanical equivalent of massive Wounds or Stun, what, 2-3 times in the movies? It's impossible to make a game play just like a cinematic movie without removing virtually all threat of actual character death from it. And it's impossible to model the game characters accurately as PCs without guessing at an XP total which, given all of Han's adventures by the time of RotJ, would be pretty high.

You can totally depict Han Solo in the game though, you just build him as an NPC with a couple ranks of Adversary and whatever Skill Ranks/Talents you see fit, which would probably include most if not all of the Talents in the Pilot and Smuggler trees, if not other things cherry-picked from other Specializations from both EotE and AoR.

Unless you're talking "gets shot twice and done" as in "exceeds Wound Threshold" which != auto-dead. I can see your point on that. 1 blaster shot is most of your wounds unless you have soak, and even then you need to be a Wookiee or Battle Droid Gadgeteer to tone those hits down reasonably far. That is certainly another conversation about lethality, probably in the balance of "PCs should be able to 1-shot a stormtrooper" but not allowing them to take 8 blaster bolts without flinching. I'm talking about character death, stick em in the ground. You may be talking more about character knockout, which itself is a threshold for character involvement: useless the rest of the scene til the Crit gets treated.

And to be honest, I don't get the issue with "we don't see stimpacks in the movies therefore putting them in the game and needing to use them is bad/un-cinematic." Spot-healing is a mechanic that needed to be there, it's in virtually every system for a reason that PCs can get into a couple successive fights without carrying nasty wounds over. I'm really trying to get your issue with it but I guess what's not clicking for me is that the game may be based on the level of action from the movies, but it's not the movies. The fact that the rules are designed to be a little more narrative, less tight-d20 doesn't mean there should be no worry about PCs getting hit and injured or killed. TONS of people are 1-shot in the Star Wars franchise. Most of them are extras, yeah, because if the stormtroopers in the Death Star hangar bay put one in Luke's face when he was standing in the open shooting like an idiot, it'd make for a pretty terrible epic action movie.

it's the fact that, no matter how skilled they are, they can still be hit by enemies... and by "still be hit" I really mean "get hit constantly" which is not the right feel in my opinion. I've used the full rules too.

Han Solo in the films, for example, would be next to impossible to depict in this game. He wears no armor (probably just heavy clothing) and may have a brawn of 3 tops... he may have destiny to help him out or cover. I'd say he's good enough with his blaster pistol to dust off at least one minion per round. Add it all up and I don't believe there's a way he survives Return of the Jedi in this game . He gets shot twice and he's done. Unless he uses stim packs maybe... which no one ever did in the movies. He might have suffered the nicks and scrapes that being wounded entails, but does he ever actually get shot? No. Come on, this game could use some improvement. It's too lethal.

Check one of my previous posts in this thread. I get the feeling that the designers envisioned WT as more of a pad and Crits as being actual real wounds. I know, they don't describe it that way, but considering how much trouble people are having with the skills and space combat ans such I don't blame them. If they made the WT some kind of Vitality Point thing like in previous editions people would want to lump it in with strain, which is really something else.

There's a lot of precedent for that notion of ablative Wounds and Crit being what'll finally kill you in FFG's 40k lines, with the crits there being lots more unforgiving in danger scope and in restoration. I could see them porting the concept and tweaking the execution to make crit less gritty than 40k and more cinematic, along the lines of the characters who get "crits" in the movies.

"That's because Plot Armor doesn't exist in the game as it does in the movies."

yeah it does! players can use destiny and they get more wound points than minions. they have differences from rivals mechanically. the game acknowledges plot armor, it just doesn't do it enough. Again, I don't think it needs that much tweaking, but it should afford players more of a chance in combat.

spot healing should also be there, but why do it in the form of stimpacks? because it works in video games? Maybe something like healing surges in D&D 4th ed. We can go on about all the ways that game stinks, but a mechanic like that would be all right in Star Wars.

but considering how much trouble people are having with the skills and space combat ans such I don't blame them. If they made the WT some kind of Vitality Point thing like in previous editions people would want to lump it in with strain, which is really something else.

I don't mind space combat. In the films, the Falcon gets knocked around constantly. In a matter of moments... what would be a respectable handful of combat rounds, the Falcon is in grave danger. I like that! Personal combat... not so much. The vitality point system in D20 combined with the thin class defense bonus seemed like a step in the right direction for that game. I like the new game, like I said, but I would like it more if it addressed this issue.

I can get behind the way Strain is recovered post-combat in a healing surge format, mainly because of the Skills it's tied to. But randomly healing surging away Wounds for a non-Force user really strains my immersion in the setting.

I'm curious, what kind of additional plot armor do you think PCs should have? A mechanic like Adversary to auto-upgrade dice?

I would say so. the adversary mechanic does a good job of elevating an enemy just a little so that they don't drop as fast. It's just a little step up and it matters.

I was thinking about that earlier today actually. Might be OP paired with the talents that allow you to upgrade opponents' difficulty, especially since it's usually multiple PCs vs a couple Rivals or one Nemesis.

Passive defense bonus Houserule : It gives you a little help without breaking the game and offers something even to those who haven't some defensive talent in their career or specialization trees. One from agi based skill, one from brawn, not skills used in combat. From 0 to 5 dice.

You may add setback dice to your defense up to your number of training in coordination against range attack or in athletics against melee/unarmed attack.

OR

Active defense bonus houserule : If you want to limit it a bit to don't be able to stand against a crowd of foes, you might add a mechanic like the defense talent to make it an active bonus, not a flat one.

You may pay 1 or more strain to add or more setback dice to your defense up to your number of training in coordination against range attack or in athletics against melee/unarmed attack.

EDIT : more clarity, addition to an active variant.

I find the combat refreshing. I like that the players have to think and be smart. I got tired of being able to stand in the middle of 20 enemies without any risk in most rpg's.

Some people said to create the Evade and Parry defense skills, what do you think about that?

Some people said to create the Evade and Parry defense skills, what do you think about that?

Opposed check in combat makes it too unlethal, we tried it : the damage system relies upon uncancelled successes and wounds are then diminished by Brawn+soak. It needs successes.

My houserule variant, gives some black dice and keeps luck in the loop to allow enough damages.

Yep, probably.

I like the concept idea that "you can only sustain one, two or three shoots before collapse" but also would like that PC's or NPC's (no problem with minions or group 1-shoot-1-hit-kill) that they will be hard to hit.

Maybe a houserule consideration. If you let that characters can repick talents like Dodge instead require to access to another tree (with the same limitation of 5 picks only) maybe they will have more easily Dodge/Side Step(?) 3 instead 1.

Possibilities of "high XP/level" chars will be higher to survive

Opinons?