Hi all, sorry if this has been brought up already. I noticed that an AT-ST has an armor of 3 and a Hull Trauma Threshold of 15. Meanwhile, the missle tube weapon has breach 1 and does 20 damage. Basically, the only damage that a missle tube will do to an AT-ST is the net successes, so it could take as many as 150 hits from missles to take out an AT-ST, unless I'm missing something. That seems a bit excessive. The anti-vehicular mine is better, but an AT-ST would still need to trip over about half a dozen of them before it finally is disabled. This seems as though it might be an issue with other vehicles as well.

So, do vehicles need lower HT thresholds and lower armor? What else might work?

Also on that note, how much damage does a couple of logs swinging from trees do?

I guess all that means is that a missile tube is not the best weapon to use against an AT-ST. Not every weapon needs to be able to take out all the vehicles. The missile tube may work better against lesser armoured vehicles, but there is a point where it isn't optimal anymore. Your're probably better off using vehicle scale weapons at that point.

As an aside, one could use the second aim maneuver to reduce or ignore the vehicles armour if a GM allows for it. It is left open as to the effects of the action.

The missile tube in the EotE core book is described as being used to take out light transports. Most vehicles have lite or no armour. AT-STs are much better armoured than most vehicles.

Missile tubes are just not the right tool for that job. Vehicle scale weapons work best to take out armoured vehicles.

As to the Battle of Endor, I am betting there were a bunch of Triumph rolled there.

I'm fine with AT-ST's being more armored than most vehicles, but I don't think anything supports giving them 3 armor and a hull trauma of 15. Regardless of what destroyed them in the movies, they were destroyed much more easily than these rules suggest.

For example, If they had armor 2 and hull trauma of 10, they'd still be pretty tough, but not cartoonishly so.

Another thought I had was something like an Anti-vehicular quality, where net successes from certain weapons deal damage on the vehicle scale instead of the personal scale. That would really simplify keeping track of damage to vehicles from the weapons that people might think to use against them. and in the case of characters being targeted with those weapons, is 30 damage with breach 1 really that much different from 21 damage with breach 1? Either way, you'll still be out with a critical hit.

The problem is our experience with the real world conflicting with the "reality" of this fictional universe modeled with a game system. Troops in our modern age can take out the most heavily armored main battle tank with a good hit using the latest "missile tube". That's ONE hit versus the equivalent of the AT-AT, let along a lightly armored scout vehicle. So, when we find out the model for EotE only allows rocket launcher wielding players to take out the equivalent of a modern passenger car, and even then some luck is needed, some of us cringe.

The answer becomes either to deprogram our real world sensibilities and replace them with this new fantasy reality (personal missile launchers are so weak they can't take out armored vehicles) OR change the rules.

I've been toying with a 5x ratio (instead of 10x) myself. If it creates balance havoc I can easily go back, but I like the 5x conversion myself much better when running the numbers. It almost seems like the intention until designers adjusted things for balance. Ex: Heavy Repeating Blaster Damage 15, becomes damage 3 on vehicle scale. Vehicle scale has an, "Autoblaster" with a damage of 3. They thus seem like the same thing at different scales.

I don't like to try and "retcon" movie scenes to make them make sense with the game mechanics so the discussion of Ewoks rolling lots of Triumph isn't particularly helpful. In all seriousness, if a pair of swinging logs can take out an AT-ST, a missile launcher should be able to do more. I mean, in the books, man-portable PLX-1 missile launchers are used effectively against AT-STs.

There's always the finbat....

I'm fine with AT-ST's being more armored than most vehicles, but I don't think anything supports giving them 3 armor and a hull trauma of 15. Regardless of what destroyed them in the movies, they were destroyed much more easily than these rules suggest.

That is not a bad point indeed. I think I agree than a lower Hull Trauma will be more appropriate, may be 12 or 10.

Conversely, the capital ships feel a bit too easily killed. Especially with blast 6 on Proton Torps.

An interdictor is easily killed, if the PC's can charge from the rear. Destiny is handy, here: They used one to enforce, "The skipper thinks we're not a threat" - and until they took out his fighter screen, he didn't. He didn't get a chance to act again after that - they sent the interdictor over it's 75 HT Threshold in a single round. (6 Y-Wings, several getting two shots landing courtesy of Linked 1 on the PT launchers.)

I assume that you mean Breach rather than Blast, right?

I assume that you mean Breach rather than Blast, right?

Yeah.

In the fairness to the ewok swinging logs, look at the size of the at-st and the size of the logs! Those are easily vehicle scale trees. If seen a suv hit a tree. The tree lost some bark. The suv had to be towed. Also I live in Canada, and therefore I also propose that a moose is a vehicle wound scale creature.

In the fairness to the ewok swinging logs, look at the size of the at-st and the size of the logs! Those are easily vehicle scale trees. If seen a suv hit a tree. The tree lost some bark. The suv had to be towed. Also I live in Canada, and therefore I also propose that a moose is a vehicle wound scale creature.

If the Rancor ain't, neither moose nor polar bears should be.

In the fairness to the ewok swinging logs, look at the size of the at-st and the size of the logs! Those are easily vehicle scale trees. If seen a suv hit a tree. The tree lost some bark. The suv had to be towed. Also I live in Canada, and therefore I also propose that a moose is a vehicle wound scale creature.

If the Rancor ain't, neither moose nor polar bears should be.

That seems to be a problem from the developers, but doesn't mean we should stick to it. At some point even biological creatures fall outside the scale that humans fit into for simulation. So, either the Rancor should be moved to vehicle scale, or the upper scales should be done away with and everything done in one scale to maintain the simulation. But then something like a starship would have different regions that could be damaged and the main structure would be intact (weapons blown out, shield generators damaged, etc...), but the ship would still fly and be able to jump.

I notice there is also a decided lack of smaller than personal scale. Insects, on an individual basis, are incapable of really hurting a person. Annoying them, yes, hurting, no. Most things tend to be side effects out of proportion to their size (e.g. poison in the bite/sting, invasion of the system by tons of them like parasites in the brain, etc...).

So, just because the developers didn't do it, doesn't mean it should be done.

Should the rancor really be vehicle scale? I don't think so. Should it be more than Brawn 6? Probably.

But just because a critter isn't vehicle scale doesn't mean hitting it at speed shouldn't do vehicular damage. A moose can be killed with a single pistol shot - it takes a while, to be sure, but a heavy pistol into the chest cavity (and missing the ribs) can kill a moose in anywhere from seconds (clipped a major blood vessel) to hours (slow leak into the lungs and/or from the kindeys or liver) or even days (peritonitis from nicking the bowel).

If it were vehicle scale, that pistol wouldn't even phase it. And it would only have one or two threshold.

Really, they need an intermediate scale.

Should the rancor really be vehicle scale? I don't think so. Should it be more than Brawn 6? Probably.

But just because a critter isn't vehicle scale doesn't mean hitting it at speed shouldn't do vehicular damage. A moose can be killed with a single pistol shot - it takes a while, to be sure, but a heavy pistol into the chest cavity (and missing the ribs) can kill a moose in anywhere from seconds (clipped a major blood vessel) to hours (slow leak into the lungs and/or from the kindeys or liver) or even days (peritonitis from nicking the bowel).

If it were vehicle scale, that pistol wouldn't even phase it. And it would only have one or two threshold.

Really, they need an intermediate scale.

And a car can be killed by that same gunshot. Hit the fuel line or damage the oil pan. Yet the damage to the vehicle is non-existant and fixable if you look for it. So, doesn't show that some creatures should be vehicle scale and just have 0 armor.

And a car can be killed by that same gunshot. Hit the fuel line or damage the oil pan. Yet the damage to the vehicle is non-existant and fixable if you look for it. So, doesn't show that some creatures should be vehicle scale and just have 0 armor.

Should the rancor really be vehicle scale? I don't think so. Should it be more than Brawn 6? Probably.

But just because a critter isn't vehicle scale doesn't mean hitting it at speed shouldn't do vehicular damage. A moose can be killed with a single pistol shot - it takes a while, to be sure, but a heavy pistol into the chest cavity (and missing the ribs) can kill a moose in anywhere from seconds (clipped a major blood vessel) to hours (slow leak into the lungs and/or from the kindeys or liver) or even days (peritonitis from nicking the bowel).

If it were vehicle scale, that pistol wouldn't even phase it. And it would only have one or two threshold.

Really, they need an intermediate scale.

Moose and car collide - moose usually dies within the hour, Car often can be driven away. Car is probably Armor 0 - the pistol only rarely does any damage of note.

Moose almost always has significant (if not always readily apparent) injuries.

It makes it far more likely then, that the car is a different scale despite the same total damage capacity.

And a car can be killed by that same gunshot. Hit the fuel line or damage the oil pan. Yet the damage to the vehicle is non-existant and fixable if you look for it. So, doesn't show that some creatures should be vehicle scale and just have 0 armor.

Should the rancor really be vehicle scale? I don't think so. Should it be more than Brawn 6? Probably.

But just because a critter isn't vehicle scale doesn't mean hitting it at speed shouldn't do vehicular damage. A moose can be killed with a single pistol shot - it takes a while, to be sure, but a heavy pistol into the chest cavity (and missing the ribs) can kill a moose in anywhere from seconds (clipped a major blood vessel) to hours (slow leak into the lungs and/or from the kindeys or liver) or even days (peritonitis from nicking the bowel).

If it were vehicle scale, that pistol wouldn't even phase it. And it would only have one or two threshold.

Really, they need an intermediate scale.

Moose and car collide - moose usually dies within the hour, Car often can be driven away. Car is probably Armor 0 - the pistol only rarely does any damage of note.

Moose almost always has significant (if not always readily apparent) injuries.

It makes it far more likely then, that the car is a different scale despite the same total damage capacity.

So nice of you to move the target in the middle of a discussion... OK, so now it is Moose vs Car. Anecdotes don't show your point. I've seen cars hit each other, both drive away, then one dies later "of its injuries". Speed and mass matter. Take a bowling ball and some strong rubberbands and you can kill a Mack Truck depending on how fast the ball is going at time of impact. Same thing here with Moose vs. Car. So, that a moose died later doesn't change the concept of making them vehicle scale or ditching scale altogether given that it is a mechanical contrivance to keep the numbers (dice, hit points, strain, resistance, whatever other stats any game can come up with) smaller.

For example, take the Death Star and its main laser. Imagine how many dice of damage it would do on the character scale if you had to roll all dice at the same scale. Yet anti-vehicle and anti-personnel weaponry do manage to damage parts of it (cannons on the surface, cameras/panels in the security room, etc...). So, scale isn't universal, but used to accomodate what is important at the moment of the story. So, when two capital ships are pounding away at each other, it isn't important that small equipment in the various ships is getting damaged from the impacts, only when to decide when one ship has done enough overall damage to the other that the fight is over (engines go critical, power dies completely, space containment is compromised, whatever...).

The moose almost always dies from an impact - even one that only does the minimum damage to a car. And, to do a crit, it must also do damage (not allowed to do a crit otherwise).

The moose dies far more often than a car - and we can argue convincingly that a car has Armor 0; even at armor 1, a good hit from a pistol won't do enough to do damage to a car, as you still have to do 10 character scale hits to get 1 Hull Trauma AFTER armor. Note that not every hit by a blaster took down a speeder bike, but Luke's lightsaber did a crit - and the 74-Z is Armor 0, HTT 2... I doubt he did 30 damage with a lighsaber (that would be 20 successes - possible if he can add force to Lightsaber - but really unlikely).

Impacting a moose enough to do obvious damage to a car needs at least 1 HT - that's 10 W - pretty minor. Doing 40 should total a car - the X-34 is listed as 0 Armor, 4 HTT, so that's a good benchmark for a car, as well. (Arguably, it is likely tougher than a car.

A Rancor is 40 WT, 12 soak = Ar 1.2 and 4 HT - and it clearly takes damage from character scale attacks. So does a moose - no inconsistency there except in your thinking.

A pistol needs 4-5 successes - doable on att or skill 3+ - to damage a car, as it is 10 W to do one HT. It's unlikely, but doable.

But a pistol is unlikely to damage an armored car at all - 1 armor will mean it needs 14-15 successes.

The only issue is whether a character scale attack can do a critical hit to a vehicle scale item when it does enough to exceed the armor, but not enough to do a hull trauma after that; if it can, then a blue die or two can offer enough advantage to generate that crit.

Looking at the critters, a moose is probably soak 7 or so, and 20 WT - enough soak to stop the average pistol shot, low enough that a skilled shooter (Att 2, skill 2, double aim, braced, scope) can put one into it and do a crit with a rifle.

I just read through an entire post detailing a moose vs. car collision in game terms, and I found it interesting, but I'm still not sure why.

I just read through an entire post detailing a moose vs. car collision in game terms, and I found it interesting, but I'm still not sure why.

I remember a tongue-in-cheek fantasy campaign where signs like that were located throughout the land warning the characters when they had ventured into areas beyond their level.

I remember a tongue-in-cheek fantasy campaign where signs like that were located throughout the land warning the characters when they had ventured into areas beyond their level.

I remember reading a novel or two with similar tone.

Real world edge cases are a fascinating bit for old-school simulationism run amok. I used to be hard-core on simulation of "reality" in my games, but I got better.

Still, it points out that there is clearly some overlap.

I remember a tongue-in-cheek fantasy campaign where signs like that were located throughout the land warning the characters when they had ventured into areas beyond their level.

LMAO! What was it played with? DnD?

I remember a tongue-in-cheek fantasy campaign where signs like that were located throughout the land warning the characters when they had ventured into areas beyond their level.

LMAO! What was it played with? DnD?

Of course it was D&D (2nd edition).