To prevent the current abuse of Auto-fire and possible future abuse of other Qualities that can have multiple activations, I propose my very simple house rule on Jury Rigged.

Replace "decrease the Advantage cost on its Critical, or any single other effect by one to a minimum of one" with "gain one automatic Advantage on all checks related to its use" in the Talent's text on page 138.

This prevents the broken Auto-fire usage of the RAW while also making it a bit more flexible since the free Advantage is now 'floating' (not affixed to Critical or any particular Quality) and can be assigned as desired when making checks with the weapon. I consider this a positive change all around for everyone except those that specifically sought to use the RAW Auto-fire exploit.

I like it.

Auto-fire seems like a really nasty snarl as it stands.

While I've personally not run into the issue of Jury-Rigged being used in the manner described, I do agree it can be a problem, and as far as house rule suggestions go, this is pretty good.

It does have the minor problem of that floating Advantage being cancelled out by an excess of Threat, particularly for PCs with a low Skill rating, as PCs do seem to be more likely to succeed with extra Threat against anything above an Average difficulty, or even against an Average difficulty if Challenge dice are introduced. So a player that's sunk XP into the Jury-Rigged talent may feel cheated if their difficulty dice keep generating lots of Threat and cancelling out that extra floating Advantage. Admittedly, that also requires the player to have really bad luck with the dice, and dice luck generally isn't something that can be used as a reliable means of measurement.

If they were getting so many Threats that it canceled, the RAW version of Jury Rigged probably wouldn't have mattered either. In fact, with the house version at least you've overcome one more Threat.

I prefer to just limit the reduction in Advantage cost to only the first activation of qualities that can be activated more than once. It's a bit more "complicated" than this house rule, but it also means the player has to pick a specific feature to be Jury Rigged rather than the whole spectrum of possibilities a free Advantage result could imply.

That said, I like the idea of this house rule flavor-wise, because it means that there are any number of strange, unique adjustments and modifications added to the piece of equipment that only the character fully understands.

BTW I have a player who's thinking about picking up Gadeteer, Mechanic, or Outlaw Tech in order to use Tinkerer on the party's ship. I'm considering allowing it since it makes sense for such a character to find additional ways to modify a starship, but I'm wondering whether or not I should consider a starship a piece of equipment...?

I prefer to just limit the reduction in Advantage cost to only the first activation of qualities that can be activated more than once. It's a bit more "complicated" than this house rule, but it also means the player has to pick a specific feature to be Jury Rigged rather than the whole spectrum of possibilities a free Advantage result could imply.

That said, I like the idea of this house rule flavor-wise, because it means that there are any number of strange, unique adjustments and modifications added to the piece of equipment that only the character fully understands.

BTW I have a player who's thinking about picking up Gadeteer, Mechanic, or Outlaw Tech in order to use Tinkerer on the party's ship. I'm considering allowing it since it makes sense for such a character to find additional ways to modify a starship, but I'm wondering whether or not I should consider a starship a piece of equipment...?

What are your concerns that would lead you to not consider a starship a piece of equipment?

HappyDaze sounds like a killjoy, but I mean that in good spirits and not maliciousness. I'd be pissed if my GM did that to me, and as a GM myself, I would never stoop to that.

It seems like you're penalizing players with the Jury Rigged talent when a much more amicable solution would be to throw harder enemies at them, for example deploying Rivals and notsomuch minions.

I've been playing and running these tabletop games for at least a decade and I think the mark of an above average GM is to be more clever within the rules as written, rather than making new ones up because of their inability to adapt to a rule that gives an edge to the players. Additionally, there's nothing stopping a GM from Jurying Rigging Auto-Fire on an NPC to throw at said players.

When I run games, I'd much rather upgrade my enemies to scale with my players instead of changing a rule to suit me.

When I'm GM, I've simply resigned to the fact that it's not my show, nor my time to shine in the spotlight. And I can throw all sorts of challenges at my players, hard or simple. But in the end, it's the PCs' spotlight, the players are the heroes of my story, and the "good guys" are supposed to win.

HappyDaze sounds like a killjoy, but I mean that in good spirits and not maliciousness. I'd be pissed if my GM did that to me, and as a GM myself, I would never stoop to that.

I think you're way off here. I never make my rules decisions in a way that "did that to me" - the decisions are not directed at any particular character.

Beyond that, playing by the rules is all well and good when the rules work well, but there's nothing better than a GM for fine tuning those rules that damage the flow of his game. I say that willingness to house rule in a fair and balanced manner is the sign of a better GM.

How many people have actually run into this problem? The few times I have seen autofire tried, it hasnt worked out very well. Except for one really awesome roll with a starship quad I have never seen autofire or linked hit more than twice. Most often it has resulted in a miss.

How many people have actually run into this problem? The few times I have seen autofire tried, it hasnt worked out very well. Except for one really awesome roll with a starship quad I have never seen autofire or linked hit more than twice. Most often it has resulted in a miss.

I have a character that can often score 4 Advantages with his heavy blaster rifle. With an unmodified weapon, that's two extra hits (total of three) which is pretty powerful. With the RAW version of Jury Rigged, that's four extra hits (total of five) which my group and I feel is unbalanced.

How many people have actually run into this problem? The few times I have seen autofire tried, it hasnt worked out very well. Except for one really awesome roll with a starship quad I have never seen autofire or linked hit more than twice. Most often it has resulted in a miss.

I have a character that can often score 4 Advantages with his heavy blaster rifle. With an unmodified weapon, that's two extra hits (total of three) which is pretty powerful. With the RAW version of Jury Rigged, that's four extra hits (total of five) which my group and I feel is unbalanced.

To play a bit of Sith's advocate, what sort of dice pool is this PC rolling, and against what difficulty on average?

If he's rolling 3 or more Proficiency dice and a few boost dice but only vs. a 2 Difficulty (base 1 for Short Range, +1 for auto-fire), that's less an issue with Autofire and more an issue with the level of threat he's going up.

It's also in part an issue with the dice system, but one that's expected as you've got a highly-skilled PC rolling against a difficulty that's not all that difficult for them; this sort of thing happens in any RPG with a set Difficulty system; with D&D 3.X it got to the point on most Knowledge checks that more than a few ranks in said skill for a high Intelligence PC (such as your typical Wizard) was a waste of skill ranks, as they could generally hit the higher DC's on an average roll on a d20. Saga Edition had traces of this two, but players didn't have skill ranks to spend each level, as you were either untrained, trained, or focused in a skill.

It almost sounds like you'd be better off simply not allowing Jury-Rigged to be used to reduce Advantage costs at all.

How many people have actually run into this problem? The few times I have seen autofire tried, it hasnt worked out very well. Except for one really awesome roll with a starship quad I have never seen autofire or linked hit more than twice. Most often it has resulted in a miss.

I have a character that can often score 4 Advantages with his heavy blaster rifle. With an unmodified weapon, that's two extra hits (total of three) which is pretty powerful. With the RAW version of Jury Rigged, that's four extra hits (total of five) which my group and I feel is unbalanced.

To play a bit of Sith's advocate, what sort of dice pool is this PC rolling, and against what difficulty on average?

If he's rolling 3 or more Proficiency dice and a few boost dice but only vs. a 2 Difficulty (base 1 for Short Range, +1 for auto-fire), that's less an issue with Autofire and more an issue with the level of threat he's going up.

It's also in part an issue with the dice system, but one that's expected as you've got a highly-skilled PC rolling against a difficulty that's not all that difficult for them; this sort of thing happens in any RPG with a set Difficulty system; with D&D 3.X it got to the point on most Knowledge checks that more than a few ranks in said skill for a high Intelligence PC (such as your typical Wizard) was a waste of skill ranks, as they could generally hit the higher DC's on an average roll on a d20. Saga Edition had traces of this two, but players didn't have skill ranks to spend each level, as you were either untrained, trained, or focused in a skill.

It almost sounds like you'd be better off simply not allowing Jury-Rigged to be used to reduce Advantage costs at all.

Or just limit it to the first activation of the quality. I feel this is consistent with the RAW, albeit a very strict interpretation of the RAW. Getting one extra hit with Auto-fire at just 1 Advantage isn't that bad, especially considering what Auto-fire is capable of already.

In any case, if any GMs out there are having problems with Auto-fire, I recommend liberal use of talents like Adversary, Dodge, Side Step, and Defensive Stance. I also recommend that enemies take advantage of both cover for defense 1 and prepared cover for defense 2 or better. Usually when I make test rolls, I assume an enemy with Adversary 1 and defense 1, because that's a lot more common than an undefended enemy standing out in the open.

Has anyone bothered to mention this getting Auto-Fire down to a single Advantage being broken to S. Stuart? I mean AoR is still in BETA and if they are going to update Jury Rigging in relation to AF now would be the time.

I'd suggest everyone sending a request to review Auto-Fire when it gets to a single Advantage to them at:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_faq.asp

Do it now, maybe enough people saying it's causing issues in combat will make a difference.

I just sent a message in myself

Just did so myself. Hopefully others will follow.

I'm just thinking, but how many active abilities can have multiple activations? Would it make sense to only allow a single activation of any active abilities?

As a GM I tend to frown on over optimized characters or in this case equipment. The result is that to challenge that player will pretty much mean death to any other players caught in the energy given off between that player and any enemies. "You see Sea Bass with big teeth coming at you... No wait he here... Make that Pteradactiles with fricken blasters on their heads."