Regardless of RP choices, it's nice when gear has something about it that sets it apart from the other choices. As it is, if I want discretion, I buy a holdout blaster. If I want something for a stand-up fight, I go heavy. Anything in between has no niche to fill.

I disagree. The common blaster does have a role to fill. It's the everyday, utility blaster pistol. A fair amount of power at a reasonable price. Enough kick to hold your own in a fight, but easier to hide than the heavy pistol if you need to stash it real quick.

Han did not start off as a good guy, which was the point. Leia seduced him to fall to the light side.

Negative. Leia didn't seduce Han.

Han does the seducing. Leia can't help but fall for his roguish good looks and charm. Do you know how many dice Han rolls on Cool checks? Nobody does! FFG hasn't produced enough yellow dice yet.

I think you could make the argument that Han was a decent guy before meeting Leia. Sure, he'll overcharge some locals for a ride, smuggle a bit of spice, and shoot a guy if he has to, but that doesn't make him a bad guy.

Han did not start off as a good guy, which was the point. Leia seduced him to fall to the light side.

Negative. Leia didn't seduce Han.

Han does the seducing. Leia can't help but fall for his roguish good looks and charm. Do you know how many dice Han rolls on Cool checks? Nobody does! FFG hasn't produced enough yellow dice yet.

I think you could make the argument that Han was a decent guy before meeting Leia. Sure, he'll overcharge some locals for a ride, smuggle a bit of spice, and shoot a guy if he has to, but that doesn't make him a bad guy.

I disagree. Leia very much did seduce Han over to the 'Light Side' (aka: the rebellion). He certainly wasn't sticking around for the accolades, or the money by the time he hit Bespin.

Not all seduction has anything to do with sex (or romance). Do you think the Emperor was about to go all ' bow-chika-bow-wow ' on Luke in the throne room on the Death Star? After all, he was trying to seduce him to the Dark Side. (**** it. I've just given myself a very unpleasant mental picture. )

Through out A New Hope Han makes it very clear that he is just in it for the money. He is loading his reward into the Falcon and preparing to blast off to pay Jabba when the Death Star shows up at Yavin. When he takes the shots that clear Vader and his wingmen off lUke it is a surprise to everyone, including both Luke and the audience. As established by Han shooting Greedo out of expediency, Han is not a nice guy, he is a mercenary rogue and small time criminal.

As for stun settings in combat, one easy solution is multiple minion groups at different bearings. The PCs focus on one at close range while the others open the range to Medium and blast away. It does not take much in the way of tactics to overcome "close to short range and use stun".

As for the efficacy of fire arms vs melee weapons, consider FBI real world gunfight statistics. Most gunfights occur at ranges of less than ten feet, most shots fired at that short range miss. It is more a social convention that people do not walk around carrying swords, clubs etc that keeps them from being used, not that they are not effective.

Page 160 "Stun beams may only be used at short range, no matter what the weapon's normal range is." This would also explain why stun only blasters are half cost.

Page 160 "Stun beams may only be used at short range, no matter what the weapon's normal range is." This would also explain why stun only blasters are half cost.

No longer strictly true after the release of Enter the Unknown. It has a stun only rifle with longer range.

Good to know. This also "fixes" the Gand Bountyhunter in The Long Arm of the Hutt who attacks with a stun rifle at long range. That was OK because the adventure was written for the Neginner Box, but nice to have the loophole well and truly closed.

I don't have any objection to longer ranged stun weapons, just didn't think it applied to the ones in the core book.

Heated debate going on! I've been reading through this and I'd like to add a couple of things:

The adversaries listed in the corerulebook are templates; one way to prevent Meta-gaming is to rename the Template and not allow the PC's to know the states of the enemies. In the games I operate, I make the PCs 'learn' the stats, via their rolls in the intuitive enough, or by finding out first hand. If I describe a foe being heavily armed and power (obviously a little more descriptive than that of course), I'm not going to tell the PCs "yeah, this guys is adversary X, on pg. Y. He's got 15 WT and 7 ST, 4Brawn, 3 Int, etc. etc. etc. I don't think the PCs should 'know' what their up against.

In addition, you don't need to follow those templates as a GM - they are simply aids to your adventure. Nothing says that if your PCs are cutting through your NPCs like butter and easily succeeding in their skill rolls that you can't scale up the difficulty - this even includes minions. Combat is supposed to be somewhat visceral and deadly in this game and everything has a risk. Just having the PC's roll 2A, 2P, 1D as an attack roll because its a stand alone battle makes simple systems like stun easy to exploit. Hell, even a blaster pistol will do in that situation. If setback or challenge dice are added in, than yes, combat is simple for PCs to wipe the floor with NPCs (I had debate on implementing increased difficulty challenges on another topic as well). As GMs we all need to remember that if something isn't going correct in our games, it's not the fault of the PC's "exploiting the system" is that we aren't doing a good enough job to challenge them. As a GM you can put a high strain on an NPC, because you're allowed. You don't have to tell the PCs, yeah this Wookie has 'x' strain, let them figure out that hitting him with a stun blaster multiple times isn't bringing him down. Also, as an GM, you can weave a story to why a certain NPC has Stun Resistence: X Bounty Hunter has researched your group - he notices that most of your jobs are carried out using stun weapons, as such, he's modified his armor to resist stun damage. Each roll from a stun weapon now require one setback die against said Bounty Hunter.

Another example is making interesting battle areas: Combat breaks out in close quarters on a ship, one of the combatants blows a light switch, adding a setback die ranged attacks, unless the crew has the appropriate gear. In addition, since you're fighting on a ship and stun damage is electrical based, you must add a challenge die to your combat roll because you have to focus on not missing your shot. The ionization of the 'stun setting' has a high potential disabling essential control mechanisms on the vessel.

My personal belief is that combat rolls should be treated no different than standard rolls as in they should always be modified based on circumstance. But, that's just me and everyone is free to GM how the please of course .

Another example is making interesting battle areas: Combat breaks out in close quarters on a ship, one of the combatants blows a light switch, adding a setback die ranged attacks, unless the crew has the appropriate gear. In addition, since you're fighting on a ship and stun damage is electrical based, you must add a challenge die to your combat roll because you have to focus on not missing your shot. The ionization of the 'stun setting' has a high potential disabling essential control mechanisms on the vessel.

Wait... You're supposed to be worried more about temporarily ionizing the controls (note - Stun damage is NOT ion damage, though it is equivalent when damaging droids) than you are of blasting them with something that can permanently damage/destroy them? I don't think so.

Wait... You're supposed to be worried more about temporarily ionizing the controls ( note - Stun damage is NOT ion damage, though it is equivalent when damaging droids ) than you are of blasting them with something that can permanently damage/destroy them? I don't think so.

Any ranged damage can be treated as such, not just stun - but if the team is using only stun weapons, this is a tool that can be implemented as a balance, simply because you're the GM.

If stun, is considered as ionization against droids, then I would place the same logic for machines, such as computers operating life support systems. I could also argue, being a GM in a science fiction setting, that a blaster may damage a life support machine, whereas the effects of Ionization against machines may short circuit the electronics, turning them completely off. After all, why do pirates and raiders use Ion turrets to disable and raid, rather than regular Turbo lasers? I'd explain to my group, using weapons that cause such an action, would have a greater impact on any type of mechanical systems, if they effect the mechanics of droids in the described way, why wouldn't they also have that same effect on other mechanics?

You don't have to interpret the damage this way, but it's a logical option that provides more than enough of a reason for a GM to throw in a setback die during certain encounters for pesky PCs only using stun damage.

I would guess that Pirates (and Customs Frigates) use ion weapons for the same reason Jawas do. It shuts down the merchandise but doesn't permanently damage it.

I will be honest, the notion of having blasters, on stun or kill, unintentionally damage vital starship components hadn't really clicked with me for Star Wars, despite having played Traveller for years, where the last thing you want to do is breach hull integrity. Combat inside spacecraft just got a whole bunch more...interesting.

Wait... You're supposed to be worried more about temporarily ionizing the controls ( note - Stun damage is NOT ion damage, though it is equivalent when damaging droids ) than you are of blasting them with something that can permanently damage/destroy them? I don't think so.

Any ranged damage can be treated as such, not just stun - but if the team is using only stun weapons, this is a tool that can be implemented as a balance, simply because you're the GM.

If stun, is considered as ionization against droids, then I would place the same logic for machines, such as computers operating life support systems. I could also argue, being a GM in a science fiction setting, that a blaster may damage a life support machine, whereas the effects of Ionization against machines may short circuit the electronics, turning them completely off. After all, why do pirates and raiders use Ion turrets to disable and raid, rather than regular Turbo lasers? I'd explain to my group, using weapons that cause such an action, would have a greater impact on any type of mechanical systems, if they effect the mechanics of droids in the described way, why wouldn't they also have that same effect on other mechanics?

You don't have to interpret the damage this way, but it's a logical option that provides more than enough of a reason for a GM to throw in a setback die during certain encounters for pesky PCs only using stun damage.

Ion weapons are used to take the target intact with a minimum of lasting damage. That means that a ship hit with ion weapons can be repaired much more quickly than one hit with turbolasers. On a personal level, the same applies to shooting electronics with a blaster bolt vs. an ion bolt. The control console hit with a (lethal setting) blaster bolt likely has serious damage that requires repairs and spare parts. The control console hit with an ion weapon can be brought back online with far less effort and probably no replacement parts needed.

As for the absolute trump card of GM fiat option, that doesn't fly in all groups. My group utterly rejects "because I'm the GM" as the end justification for things that don't make sense.

Here's a mechanical situation: a bullet (or blaster if you will) will **** a device, requiring repair. But, it would take a direct hit to deal catastrophic damage to a system. Skimming something, can easily be narrated by a GM, whereas a full on hit can also easily be narrated by a GM. A setback can be put in place for any ranged attack as I mentioned, but that's the GMs call.

Using setting (ionization) doesn't require a direct hit, at least from the novels, movies and game, from what I've seen. An example for large scale combat - an x-wing gets hit with a blaster in the wing, this could cause damage to the x-wing and disable the ship via a large enough hole. An x-wing gets hit im the wing with ionization, it gets disabled... My argument is the same in a vehicle - a blaster can hit a casing, or hinge or window, or youn name it, but I'd say it'd need a more direct hit to damage an entire system. With stun/ionization, if you hit somewhere, since everything is interconnected, a smaller hit carries a lot more weight simply because its mechanical. And yes, because the book says the stun settings effect droids in that manner, I will say its enough to justify other mechanical devices would be effected in the spirit of the rules. I'm not trying to debate ultimate damage to a system, but simply saying that there should be a setback or challenge die because of the higher chance of an immediate and widespread effect on the ship during combat. If you want to say setback for a blaster bolt and a challenge for stun/ionization, because blasters may cause damage and ionization may disable and important system inadvertently, I think that's justifiable simply because the RAW states stun causes damage to droids, else I'd say that ideology was a farce. I mean ultimately, this is my interpretation of the Star Wars universe, you may have a different one, that doesn't mean that a similar idea or concept can't be used to give pause to what is considered abusing a system. If you're not keen on using it, don't .

I think the uses of setbacks and challenge dice due to creative use of environment, or other measures can easily be created/explained to curb what a GM sees as exploiting the rules.

I don't know if this has been mentioned, but unlike wounds there's no limit on the number of a times the Medicine skill can be used to recover strain, just like there's no limit to the number of times the Mechanics skill can recover strain on a vehicle. This has been well-established in my game; although bounty hunters have attempted to stun them in the past, the party Doctor has always been on hand help out with her bag of miracle drugs. Granted no talents like Fine Tuning exist for the Medicine skill, but then again vehicles have fewer ways of recovering strain than PCs do.

It should be noted, however, that I handle this narratively. If something physical caused the strain (i.e. a stun weapon, inclement weather, poison, etc) it can be cured with the Medicine skill. If it was something mental (i.e. Threat results based on fear or stress) the character needs to make a Cool or Discipline check as usual, perhaps with assistance (a breathing coach with Discipline or a pep talk with Charm or Leadership, or something else). I don't keep track of how each individual strain point was lost, just keep in mind what happened for the most part.

Also, Han was ALWAYS a good guy, just a little selfish. Part of his "seducing" Leia (who was already very much attracted to him) lay in convincing her that she had him figured wrong. He had an attitude of, "Okay, so I'm a bit of a pirate but I actually put myself out there to help people when I can. If she doesn't believe that, she doesn't know me."

Problem was, he was running off on his own to pay back Jabba, ignoring not only the Rebellion but also the fact the he has friends like her and thus didn't need to do everything alone. Her attitude is one of, "Okay,so you claim to be so attracted to me but you don't trust me to be able to help you? Jabba doesn't scare me and if you think he should you don't know me."

In other words, Han had to do some growing up, and Leia had to let her true feelings show for once.