As a house rule, I am considering ignoring the rule that says that future increases to Brawn/Willpower do not increase Wound/Strain Threshold. I don't see any good reason for the rule as written, and I prefer that there not be a 'trap' where it's mechanically better to start with Brawn/Willpower high and raise other characteristics than to start with others high and later raise Brawn/Willpower.

So, is there something I'm missing? Is there any good reason not to base WT/ST on current (Brawn + 2 * Toughened)/(Willpower + Grit)?

Higher Thresholds will lead to a less "realistic" game, but this isn't by itself a bad thing - we're playing Star Wars after all, so normally death-defying feats should be regularly attempted.

The only pitfall is one that already exists - it could leech the drama out of what would otherwise be tense situations ("He's only got a basic carbine trained on me? Even if he gets the first shot I think I can still take him."*).

Specs with multiple levels of Toughened have a much bigger effect than your house rule (our Marauder has a wound threshold 50% higher than the second toughest in the group).

*There's an RP argument to be made here, but it gets hard to take these things seriously when the game mechanics don't.

I'm sure someone can come up with a good reason. Whether it will be accepted as a good reason is a different matter altogether.

I would say the reason is the one the devs have given; that you're supposed to take the Toughened/Grit talents to increase the wound/strain threshold. If you can also raise it by increasing Brawn you make the Dedicated talent even more important (and make increasing the Brawn characteristic more "valuable" than any of the others, since it also increases Soak and Encumbrance already and gives more dice to Brawn skills) while reducing (somewhat) the value of Toughened and Grit. Hardly gamebreaking, I know, but it seems like a sound rationale to me.

I'm sure someone can come up with a good reason. Whether it will be accepted as a good reason is a different matter altogether.

This.

We already ignore this. I don't see the point of it. We don't wear much armour, so the odd extra point of wound threshold isn't game-breaking. I can only see it being a problem with a twinked-out droid with full armour and cyberwear and all the Hired Gun talents.

Hi.

Not sure, if this is considered to be reasonable: I thought SW-EotE is more about the narratives, and not so much about the mechanics. Houseruling a game-mechanic has the spirit of focussing on game-mechanics.

On the other side: Since wound-treshold and strain are drawn from characteristics, it is even thematically convincing that these values rise as a reaction to raised characteristics.

In the end it depends on what you like to achieve with your game. Since the "rules as written" are, according to Jay Little on the Order 66 Podcast, supposed to be "guidelines", I think there is nothing wrong with houseruling things ...

Best wishes!

Mad

I've ignored that one from the get go. Always based those derived attributes on the current stats.

I would say the reason is the one the devs have given; that you're supposed to take the Toughened/Grit talents to increase the wound/strain threshold. If you can also raise it by increasing Brawn you make the Dedicated talent even more important (and make increasing the Brawn characteristic more "valuable" than any of the others, since it also increases Soak and Encumbrance already and gives more dice to Brawn skills) while reducing (somewhat) the value of Toughened and Grit. Hardly gamebreaking, I know, but it seems like a sound rationale to me.

If increasing Brawn, it will still max out at 6 so the gain is fairly small compared to what is gained by Toughened. OTOH, the increase in Soak that you do get by RAW seems to challenge the (much less common and often more expensive) Enduring talent.

On the other side: Since wound-treshold and strain are drawn from characteristics, it is even thematically convincing that these values rise as a reaction to raised characteristics.

This is my view of it too. There shouldn't be any difference between the guy that started Brawn 2, Agility 3 and increases Brawn to 3 vs the guy that started Brawn 3, Agility 2 and increases Agility to 3. I feel that both should have all derived values be recalculated to match what they have currently. This does mean that I feel that Critical Injuries that permanently reduce Brawn/Willpower should also reduce the Wound/Strain Threshold.

Wounds is easy enough I think, more exercise equals abs and buns of steel.....strain is a little more worrisome since it's a resource used to increase offensive ability, but even so it could always be tested to see if it's an issue and decide after.

So, is there something I'm missing? Is there any good reason not to base WT/ST on current (Brawn + 2 * Toughened)/(Willpower + Grit)?

I don't think it's game breaking. Narratively, it gives hope to all those 90 lb weaklings who start working out, but it does give short shrift to all those Wookiees who got something from birth that no one else should be able to attain...

I mean all things considered, allowing this would only make a maxed out brawn or willpower starting character gain 1 more wound or strain (or perhaps 2 for wounds if applying this to cybernetics too). As starting characteristics are capped at 5, for a human that would be 15 wound/strain threshold, with dedication and cybernetics upped to 17 brawn, that is equal to 1 toughened talent, and much more expensive in every way. For strain it would be maxed out at 16, after which Grit is the only way to further increase it.

On the other hand, requiring toughened and grit for wound and strain threshold increases removes some focus from characteristics, which are perhaps the most central variables in the game already. I'd rather be inclined to make Soak static and based on starting Brawn too, no increase if Brawn increases... of course this creates an incentive to make Brawn focused characters for everyone, so as it is I think it's ok. Or you could switch it to let the thresholds increase, but let soak remain static on starting Brawn. This creates an incentive for high Brawn too, but also to wear armour.

Anyway, I see no issue with the way it currently stands as per the core rules really, aside perhaps from soak monsters, but luckily I only have half a soak monster at the moment, and there is always ways to have fun with them, immobilising them for instance...

I would say the reason is the one the devs have given; that you're supposed to take the Toughened/Grit talents to increase the wound/strain threshold. If you can also raise it by increasing Brawn you make the Dedicated talent even more important (and make increasing the Brawn characteristic more "valuable" than any of the others, since it also increases Soak and Encumbrance already and gives more dice to Brawn skills) while reducing (somewhat) the value of Toughened and Grit. Hardly gamebreaking, I know, but it seems like a sound rationale to me.

It makes Brawn more valuable, sure, but not more valuable than all the rest unless you focus on melee. +1 Wound for 25 XP (not counting the 75-125 XP you spend just to get there) isn't worth if if that's the only reason you're buying Brawn. And buying more Brawn just to have +1 Encumbrance isn't exactly smart spending either, with the ton of gear pieces that give you a lot better than just +1 Encumbrance for pretty cheap.

The way I see it, the opportunities to buy Grit/Toughened and/or raise your various attributes are few and far between already, so why not? I don't think many characters will have the opportunity to skyrocket their Wound or Strain Thresholds no matter what.

It doesn't matter how many Wounds you have; NPCs can still get a crit with three Threat no matter what. Otherwise it just increases the amount of time it takes to nickel and dime a PC to death, which is justifiable given the universe.

I hadn't thought about until you brought it up, but I looked and:

"After determining this initial value, further increases to to a character's Brawn/Willpower rating do not increase his wound/strain threshold-wound/strain threshold improvements are acquired by purchasing talents such as Toughened/Grit."

- p.94, Core Rulebook.

Soak works differently, however. Current Brawn + Armor + Enduring.

"After determining this initial value, increases to a character's Brawn rating increase his soak value."

- p.94, Core Rulebook.

So your house rule is actually RAW. Congratulations!

Uhm HD's question is about increasing wound/strain thresholds with later increases.

It really doesn't break anything. There are still hard caps on Characteristics, after all, and you're not going to derive any real benefit if you're spending Dedication to up Brawn solely for another Wound.

The only reason I can see is that you don't want temporary boosts (or penalties) to impact those stats because there are bad/complicated consequences to that.

There isn't really any good reason why a permanent boost wouldn't though.

If you houserule that you do change derived stats when you raise an ability, you should probably rule that only permanent changes do and temporary changes don't. Personally I'd put cybernetics in the temporary category.

Ideally ability penalties should be dealt with by strain or lowering strain threshold, but there are times when force powers or drugs or whatever may be better done as a temporary boost or penalty to a stat.

The short answer is: The game works fine as it is, so why change it?

Mechanically, it cheapens the benefit of Toughened and especially Grit, which both exist solely to increase a character's Wound or Strain Threshold, which could be why the FFG design team made the choice they did.

As far as it impacting the balance of the game... until your PCs start racking up multiple Dedication talents, you're probably not going to see much as the occasional +1 to Wound or Strain Threshold isn't going to be that huge of a tipping point. Barring a specialization that really focuses on Brawn (such as the Marauder), you're probably not going to see PCs getting that much tougher just from raising their Brawn through the Dedication talent. Strain Threshold is a bit different, but not by all that much,though seeing as how Grit is a +1 to Strain Threshold, it gets devalued a bit more, but not so much that it's entirely worthless (though some players may grumble about having to pay 15 or 20 XP for that talent just so they can move further along their specialization tree).

I really don't think it cheapens those talents, considering how much cheaper they usually are than Dedication, and how much of a waste Dedication: Brawn is for a lot of characters, especially for just a wound. Maybe at 1000+ XP you start increasing tertiary stats for the hell of it, but that's an extremely remote concern.

I don't see any good reason for the rule as written, and I prefer that there not be a 'trap' where it's mechanically better to start with Brawn/Willpower high and raise other characteristics than to start with others high and later raise Brawn/Willpower.

If order-of-development effects like this are your primary concern, why not allow players to rebuild their characters as long as they end up with the same characteristics, talents and skills? So if a character who starts with a 3 in Brawn but a 4 in Agility uses Dedication to raise his Brawn to 4, he can pretend he started with Brawn 4 and Agility 3, then used Dedication to raise his Agility to 4. This has less chance of affecting the game's balance than a house rule (though I doubt your house rule will have much effect). It also allows optimizers to develop their characters organically instead of planning characters in advance so they can take advantage of talents that are cheaper in one specialization than another.

I don't see any good reason for the rule as written, and I prefer that there not be a 'trap' where it's mechanically better to start with Brawn/Willpower high and raise other characteristics than to start with others high and later raise Brawn/Willpower.

If order-of-development effects like this are your primary concern, why not allow players to rebuild their characters as long as they end up with the same characteristics, talents and skills? So if a character who starts with a 3 in Brawn but a 4 in Agility uses Dedication to raise his Brawn to 4, he can pretend he started with Brawn 4 and Agility 3, then used Dedication to raise his Agility to 4. This has less chance of affecting the game's balance than a house rule (though I doubt your house rule will have much effect). It also allows optimizers to develop their characters organically instead of planning characters in advance so they can take advantage of talents that are cheaper in one specialization than another.

Wouldn't that be an unnecessarily convoluted way of accomplishing what this fairly simple house rule already achieves?

Wouldn't that be an unnecessarily convoluted way of accomplishing what this fairly simple house rule already achieves?

Isn't that just game design in a nutshell?

I kid, I kid. Upon further reflection, though, I think I'd play with the base rules. Not out of an "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" point of view, but Morningfire has a point: for those Grit and Toughened talents to have the maximum reward mentality among the players, they have to provide something the players can't get anywhere else. Besides, I think it's easier to work your way to a Grit or Toughened talent than one that raises your Brawn or Willpower.