On 2/7/2014 at 6:49 AM, mouthymerc said:

I think it comes down to what you believe as far as races go. On average, wookies tend to be stronger than humans, hence why they start with a higher Brawn. Now if you think that a wookie is always going to have the potential to be stronger than humans, then they should have a higher cap on Brawn than humans. But if you believe that any race has the potential to be just as Brawny (for whatever reasons) as any other then the cap needs to be equal across the board. I think the designers felt that while some races start with varying stats, they all have the same potential. you could have a human that trains or through genetics can be just as strong as a wookie.

This is a big problem for suspension of disbelief in my book. For one thing, think about how Brawn also connects to your lifting capacity and what you actually weigh for purposes of being carried. So your Human who started at 2 Brawn and is now at 6 Brawn used to weigh 7 Enc (Encumbrance) but now weighs 11 Enc if carried. Which is what the Wookiee or Hutt with 6 Brawn weighs too.

I see Brawn raised above 3 for humans (or similarly framed aliens) as basically being narrative/abstract and relating to how well they can apply their strength not indicating the muscle mass of a wookiee. Melee combat is so often actually about technique, edge/point/striking surface discipline and leverage that I feel like it's reasonable to give a character that explanation of being super good at doing damage, but I don't let them pick up objects that people couldn't pick up. I also find that my players don't like to be described as a Strong Man Contest guy and want to instead look like normal humans from the movies that have average athletic builds. Because if they want to be a max-size human I am gong to insist that they look like the Mountain from GoT.

So I usually freeze their Enc at 7 despite their Brawn upgrades and I treat physically larger species as having a higher Enc.

For actual Tests of Strength, I explain it differently: if a Human and a Wookiee do an arm-wrestling contest when the Human has 6 Brawn and the Wook has say even 3, in all likelihood the Human is going to lose unless there is some trick of leverage or distraction involved. I feel it's more destructive to the simulation if the Human wins because of that 6 Brawn when facing something physically larger and with dense muscle tissue like apes have. The Human character would have upgrades to difficulty whereas the Wookiee would have decreased difficulty for the same task.

Life isn't fair. Let the Wookiee win by making a sacrifice on the altar of continuity and common sense

On 4/28/2019 at 3:52 PM, Archlyte said:

This is a big problem for suspension of disbelief in my book. For one thing, think about how Brawn also connects to your lifting capacity and what you actually weigh for purposes of being carried. So your Human who started at 2 Brawn and is now at 6 Brawn used to weigh 7 Enc (Encumbrance) but now weighs 11 Enc if carried. Which is what the Wookiee or Hutt with 6 Brawn weighs too.

I see Brawn raised above 3 for humans (or similarly framed aliens) as basically being narrative/abstract and relating to how well they can apply their strength not indicating the muscle mass of a wookiee. Melee combat is so often actually about technique, edge/point/striking surface discipline and leverage that I feel like it's reasonable to give a character that explanation of being super good at doing damage, but I don't let them pick up objects that people couldn't pick up. I also find that my players don't like to be described as a Strong Man Contest guy and want to instead look like normal humans from the movies that have average athletic builds. Because if they want to be a max-size human I am gong to insist that they look like the Mountain from GoT.

So I usually freeze their Enc at 7 despite their Brawn upgrades and I treat physically larger species as having a higher Enc.

For actual Tests of Strength, I explain it differently: if a Human and a Wookiee do an arm-wrestling contest when the Human has 6 Brawn and the Wook has say even 3, in all likelihood the Human is going to lose unless there is some trick of leverage or distraction involved. I feel it's more destructive to the simulation if the Human wins because of that 6 Brawn when facing something physically larger and with dense muscle tissue like apes have. The Human character would have upgrades to difficulty whereas the Wookiee would have decreased difficulty for the same task.

Life isn't fair. Let the Wookiee win by making a sacrifice on the altar of continuity and common sense

Take a look at competitors in the 'worlds strongest man' and I think you can see how they'd be as strong as or weigh as much as a wookie of the same strength.

Brian Shaw is 6'8" and weighs 415 lbs. Average wookiee is 6'11" and weighs in at 275 lbs. I'm pretty sure Brian would give Chewy a run for his money in an arm wrestling contest. John Brzenk is 5'11" and weighs 209 lbs. He's a champion arm wrestler. He regularly beats much larger opponents including a guy that weighed 660lbs.

A 6 brawn human would be incredibly rare, and they wouldn't look like Chris Evans or Chris Hemsworth, but it wouldn't be an impossibility.

All that aside, my biggest issue is a bionic limb giving a strength bonus. It makes no sense. Stick a metal arm on me and I can't lift a car, no matter how much the arm can support, the rest of my body is the problem. You're more likely to rip the arm off yourself then you are to lift the car.

But it's a game, and its fun to think that sticking a robot arm on you makes you stronger...so suspend your disbelief and have a little fun.

48 minutes ago, kmanweiss said:

Take a look at competitors in the 'worlds strongest man' and I think you can see how they'd be as strong as or weigh as much as a wookie of the same strength.

Brian Shaw is 6'8" and weighs 415 lbs. Average wookiee is 6'11" and weighs in at 275 lbs. I'm pretty sure Brian would give Chewy a run for his money in an arm wrestling contest. John Brzenk is 5'11" and weighs 209 lbs. He's a champion arm wrestler. He regularly beats much larger opponents including a guy that weighed 660lbs.

A 6 brawn human would be incredibly rare, and they wouldn't look like Chris Evans or Chris Hemsworth, but it wouldn't be an impossibility.

All that aside, my biggest issue is a bionic limb giving a strength bonus. It makes no sense. Stick a metal arm on me and I can't lift a car, no matter how much the arm can support, the rest of my body is the problem. You're more likely to rip the arm off yourself then you are to lift the car.

But it's a game, and its fun to think that sticking a robot arm on you makes you stronger...so suspend your disbelief and have a little fun.

A chimpanzee can be smaller than a human in stature and body weight and still demonstrate greater strength because of the physiological difference. Plus having humans body slamming wookiees seems like maybe it's not so in line with Star Wars to my mind. It's more like Lieutenant Worf from Star Trek who constantly gets pumped up as being super strong and tough only to get choke slammed by every bad guy who get sin the bridge of the Enterprise.

The unrestrained ego trip style of play has never been something I'm personally not interested in from either side of the screen. I would wonder why a player would need to flex nuts to that degree, especially when it just acts to diminish wookiees. It's kind of their thing. If you want to be super strong then maybe make an alien

16 hours ago, Archlyte said:

A chimpanzee can be smaller than a human in stature and body weight and still demonstrate greater strength because of the physiological difference. Plus having humans body slamming wookiees seems like maybe it's not so in line with Star Wars to my mind. It's more like Lieutenant Worf from Star Trek who constantly gets pumped up as being super strong and tough only to get choke slammed by every bad guy who get sin the bridge of the Enterprise.

The unrestrained ego trip style of play has never been something I'm personally not interested in from either side of the screen. I would wonder why a player would need to flex nuts to that degree, especially when it just acts to diminish wookiees. It's kind of their thing. If you want to be super strong then maybe make an alien

I'm not disagreeing with you. If a player of mine was trying to do anything over a 4 brawn human I'd be having a talk with them. There would be impacts in the game. But if the justification was legitimate enough, I'd allow it. I'm running a game, not a reality simulator (It's star wars after all). There is no conceivable way that a Toydarian can fly...but we let it happen because it's sci-fi.

Talking about chimps, apes, etc. I'm not sure how it applies. Yes, they are stronger than humans due to biology...but who says this applies to Wookiees. How do we know that humans aren't the chimps of the SW universe? It's not like we have aliens to dissect and study?

4 hours ago, kmanweiss said:

I'm not disagreeing with you. If a player of mine was trying to do anything over a 4 brawn human I'd be having a talk with them. There would be impacts in the game. But if the justification was legitimate enough, I'd allow it. I'm running a game, not a reality simulator (It's star wars after all). There is no conceivable way that a Toydarian can fly...but we let it happen because it's sci-fi.

Talking about chimps, apes, etc. I'm not sure how it applies. Yes, they are stronger than humans due to biology...but who says this applies to Wookiees. How do we know that humans aren't the chimps of the SW universe? It's not like we have aliens to dissect and study?

Oh I read somewhere that they are supposed to be arboreal primates and that they have to climb like 1000 foot trees lol. You're right though they could just be basically a tall dude with fur

2 hours ago, Archlyte said:

Oh I read somewhere that they are supposed to be arboreal primates and that they have to climb like 1000 foot trees lol. You're right though they could just be basically a tall dude with fur

That's actual canon. We see Kashyyk in RotS. It does have kilometers high trees into which they built their cities.

18 minutes ago, Tramp Graphics said:

That's actual canon. We see Kashyyk in RotS. It does have kilometers high trees into which they built their cities.

Tried to say thanks but i'm out of reactions for today. Thanks I was sure I saw that somewhere.

From a GM's point of view, when character start to have 5 or more ability dice, it gets kind of silly and nearly impossible for them to fail. It just enforces the gap between that character and someone with only 2-3 dice. I have a house rule that 4 is the max you can go without cybernetics, thus saving 6 for the really awesome stuff (like rancors).

3 hours ago, ianinak said:

From a GM's point of view, when character start to have 5 or more ability dice, it gets kind of silly and nearly impossible for them to fail. It just enforces the gap between that character and someone with only 2-3 dice. I have a house rule that 4 is the max you can go without cybernetics, thus saving 6 for the really awesome stuff (like rancors).

Yeah I know people who limit the advancement of characteristics in their campaigns just because of this. According to Jay Little the more dice that are in the pool the more Normalized the results tend to be, which I took to mean that the results tend to be in the middle. But for that to happen the pool has to be pretty even on both the positive and the negative side of the pool (5Y1G+5R1P) doesn't it?

23 minutes ago, Archlyte said:

Yeah I know people who limit the advancement of characteristics in their campaigns just because of this. According to Jay Little the more dice that are in the pool the more Normalized the results tend to be, which I took to mean that the results tend to be in the middle. But for that to happen the pool has to be pretty even on both the positive and the negative side of the pool (5Y1G+5R1P) doesn't it?

I strongly recommend the Genesys approach where Dedication can only be purchased once per Characteristic. Of course, I also prefer Genesys for getting rid of spending points to spend points (buying Specializations) and dropping talent trees to allow more organic building of characters. It's vehicle combat is somewhat better even if it needs more intermediate scaling steps, and I like that the customization rules are toned down too. I really hope that a SW 2e follows in these steps, but it wouldn't facilitate selling as many books that way (particularly by dropping the specs/talent trees), so it's not going to happen.

The specilzation system help limit to power building of a character. They are limited to their tree which won't have too many talents that can be abused. It also helps to protect powerful talents by giving them strange paths to get to them. Extra cost to get new tree since that can lead to better combination of talents. Also the more talents that exists the not abused the Genesys system can become.

If you can trust you players not to power game then the Genesys system can work well, but the star wars tree system helps keep balance of the talents.

I'm tempted to try it in my next campaign, but need to find the complete talent list and set the exp cost of not connected to a tree.

How would improving force rating be handled with Genesys rules?

45 minutes ago, damnkid3 said:

The specilzation system help limit to power building of a character. They are limited to their tree which won't have too many talents that can be abused. It also helps to protect powerful talents by giving them strange paths to get to them. Extra cost to get new tree since that can lead to better combination of talents. Also the more talents that exists the not abused the Genesys system can become.

If you can trust you players not to power game then the Genesys system can work well, but the star wars tree system helps keep balance of the talents.

I'm tempted to try it in my next campaign, but need to find the complete talent list and set the exp cost of not connected to a tree.

How would improving force rating be handled with Genesys rules?

Force would be a 'magic' skill like Arcane/Divine/Primal and powers would be more freeform with add-ons based upon Knowledge (Lore).

Unless I missed it no one has mentioned Silhouette as a way to deal with the issue of say a wookiee vs a rancor when trying to determine raw strength. Silhouette seems to be something kinda exponential but just as I'm not a mathematician I'm guessing none of the game's designers are either . In any case it's been a while so any math geeks out there forgive me if I'm less than exact or anything. The base PC/NPC mass is silhouette 1 (Sil 1) and if we are doing a basic exponential growth then figure a Sil 2 = a mass of 2 x Sil 1, and Sil 3 would be 6 x Sil 1 etc. Wookiees, and most PC species, are silhouette 1 and a rancor is silhouette 3 so even if they both have Brawn 6 a rancor's 6 is actually 6 times stronger than a wookiee's. For combat this doesn't matter much because the system is a simplified roll X do Y damage but if you want to get an idea of how to role play the Brawn difference of a situation like a wookiee arm wrestling a rancor you'd do something like upgrading the Athletics difficulty six times. Anyway that's the way I'd do it.

On 4/30/2019 at 11:20 AM, kmanweiss said:

Talking about chimps, apes, etc. I'm not sure how it applies. Yes, they are stronger than humans due to biology...but who says this applies to Wookiees. How do we know that humans aren't the chimps of the SW universe? It's not like we have aliens to dissect and study? 

Just as a side note, the biological reason why primates have stronger arms and legs is how the muscles connect and transfer power down those limbs. Primates have a more direct muscular connection down to hands and feet allowing a great deal of force to be generated but compared to humans they have limited dexterity in their hands and feet. They can grasp things with great strength but can't fix a pocket watch. Humans evolved acute dexterity in our hands, and our feet as well to help us walk upright, but to get that we lost that more direct transfer of force. So a human can have the same volume of muscle mass but still not generate the same amount of force as a chimpanzee. Wookiees have limbs closer to humans than apes so their strength is more about their size than anything else, if they met a gorilla they'd be the ones getting their arms ripped off ie. let the gorilla win...

23 minutes ago, FuriousGreg said:

Unless I missed it no one has mentioned Silhouette as a way to deal with the issue of say a wookie vs a rancor when trying to determine raw strength. Silhouette seems to be something kinda exponential but just as I'm not a mathematician I'm guessing none of the game's designers are either . In any case it's been a while so any math geeks out there forgive me if I'm less than exact or anything. The base PC/NPC mass is silhouette 1 (Sil 1) and if we are doing a basic exponential growth then figure a Sil 2 = a mass of 4 x Sil 1, and Sil 3 would be 6 x Sil 1 etc. Wookies, and most PC species, are silhouette 1 and a rancor is silhouette 3 so even if they both have Brawn 6 a rancor's 6 is actually 6 times stronger than a wookie's. For combat this doesn't matter much because the system is a simplified roll X do Y damage but if you want to get an idea of how to role play the Brawn difference of a situation like a wookie arm wrestling a rancor you'd do something like upgrading the Athletics difficulty six times. Anyway that's the way I'd do it.

Just as a side note, the biological reason why primates have stronger arms and legs is how the muscles connect and transfer power down those limbs. Primates have a more direct muscular connection down to hands and feet allowing a great deal of force to be generated but compared to humans they have limited dexterity in their hands and feet. They can grasp things with great strength but can't fix a pocket watch. Humans evolved acute dexterity in our hands, and our feet as well to help us walk upright, but to get that we lost that more direct transfer of force. So a human can have the same volume of muscle mass but still not generate the same amount of force as a chimpanzee. Wookies have limbs closer to humans than apes so their strength is more about their size than anything else, if they met a gorilla they'd be the ones getting their arms ripped off ie. let the gorilla win...

Well that is unless they have some sort of a hybrid or can use their physiology differently. I think that making Wookiees basically on par with humans in the strength department is just a disappointing idea. It would mean tales of Wookiee strength are largely just BS. Also I'm thinking about what kind of strength it would take to climb 1 km tall trees when you have that high of a body weight.

1 minute ago, Archlyte said:

Well that is unless they have some sort of a hybrid or can use their physiology differently. I think that making Wookiees basically on par with humans in the strength department is just a disappointing idea. It would mean tales of Wookiee strength are largely just BS. Also I'm thinking about what kind of strength it would take to climb 1 km tall trees when you have that high of a body weight.

I'm not saying they aren't stronger just that their strength is on the same scale as a human. The game represents this by making the average wookiee's Brawn 3 as opposed to human's of 2. Keep in mind that Player Characters are not average specimens so when they have high Brawn it's because they are heroes. In any case it's best not to worry too much about it.

11 hours ago, FuriousGreg said:

I'm not saying they aren't stronger just that their strength is on the same scale as a human. The game represents this by making the average wookiee's Brawn 3 as opposed to human's of 2. Keep in mind that Player Characters are not average specimens so when they have high Brawn it's because they are heroes. In any case it's best not to worry too much about it.

I think it's not a good representation to be honest, and I don't remember a lot of muscle-bound superhumans in the Star Wars Movies. Giving a Wookiee 3 to start is fine for the mechanics of dice rolling but as an explanation it's garbage. I don't worry about it because I make sure that my players know that it is abstract and that they are not playing MCU characters but Star Wars characters.

On 5/7/2019 at 12:24 AM, FuriousGreg said:

Unless I missed it no one has mentioned Silhouette as a way to deal with the issue of say a wookiee vs a rancor when trying to determine raw strength. Silhouette seems to be something kinda exponential but just as I'm not a mathematician I'm guessing none of the game's designers are either . In any case it's been a while so any math geeks out there forgive me if I'm less than exact or anything. The base PC/NPC mass is silhouette 1 (Sil 1) and if we are doing a basic exponential growth then figure a Sil 2 = a mass of 2 x Sil 1, and Sil 3 would be 6 x Sil 1 etc. Wookiees, and most PC species, are silhouette 1 and a rancor is silhouette 3 so even if they both have Brawn 6 a rancor's 6 is actually 6 times stronger than a wookiee's. For combat this doesn't matter much because the system is a simplified roll X do Y damage but if you want to get an idea of how to role play the Brawn difference of a situation like a wookiee arm wrestling a rancor you'd do something like upgrading the Athletics difficulty six times. Anyway that's the way I'd do it.

Just as a side note, the biological reason why primates have stronger arms and legs is how the muscles connect and transfer power down those limbs. Primates have a more direct muscular connection down to hands and feet allowing a great deal of force to be generated but compared to humans they have limited dexterity in their hands and feet. They can grasp things with great strength but can't fix a pocket watch. Humans evolved acute dexterity in our hands, and our feet as well to help us walk upright, but to get that we lost that more direct transfer of force. So a human can have the same volume of muscle mass but still not generate the same amount of force as a chimpanzee. Wookiees have limbs closer to humans than apes so their strength is more about their size than anything else, if they met a gorilla they'd be the ones getting their arms ripped off ie. let the gorilla win...

You do realize that humans are primates too. 🤔

6 hours ago, Tramp Graphics said:

You do realize that humans are primates too. 🤔

Yes I know but when you use that term it generally refers to non-human...

On 5/7/2019 at 6:24 AM, FuriousGreg said:

if    you want to get an idea of how to role play the Brawn difference of a situation like a wookiee arm wrestling a rancor you'd do something like upgrading the At  hletics difficulty six times. Anyway that's the way I'd do it  .  

Not that anyone asked, but here's how I'd play it if a PC (wookiee or otherwise) wanted to armwrestle a rancor:

I'd tell them to not bother with the dice, because the PC would lose. Badly.

I'd simply treat it as an impossible check, and not allow a destiny point to be flipped to try anyway, because armwrestling a 5 meter tall monster that can quite casually lift 150 kilograms or so of gamorrean with one hand will never be dramatically appropriate in any campaign I'm running.

14 minutes ago, penpenpen said:

Not that anyone asked, but here's how I'd play it if a PC (wookiee or otherwise) wanted to armwrestle a rancor:

I'd tell them to not bother with the dice, because the PC would lose. Badly.

I'd simply treat it as an impossible check, and not allow a destiny point to be flipped to try anyway, because armwrestling a 5 meter tall monster that can quite casually lift 150 kilograms or so of gamorrean with one hand will never be dramatically appropriate in any campaign I'm running.

In all honesty that's how I would actually do it as well , no roll just a questioning look 🤨 and an "are you serious?" but if someone really needed a reason then I'd use what I said to justify it. I'm a firm believer in the GM having a reason other than "because I said so" but that just me. In any case I'm lucky that I have a group of players that wouldn't even ask to do something that ridiculous.

1 minute ago, FuriousGreg said:

In all honesty that's how I would actually do it as well , no roll just a questioning look 🤨 and an "are you serious?" but if someone really needed a reason then I'd use what I said to justify it. I'm a firm believer in the GM having a reason other than "because I said so" but that just me. In any case I'm lucky that I have a group of players that wouldn't even ask to do something that ridiculous.

Sure, you can armwrestle him. You sit down in front of the rancor, putting your elbow on the plasteel table, you chose for the competition. The rancor walks over the table and with a mighty roar, he slams you to the ground. Roll a critical hit with +30, then roll initiative, because it's a Rancor FFS!

On 5/9/2019 at 8:32 PM, penpenpen said:

Not that anyone asked, but here's how I'd play it if a PC (wookiee or otherwise) wanted to armwrestle a rancor:

I'd tell them to not bother with the dice, because the PC would lose. Badly.

I'd simply treat it as an impossible check, and not allow a destiny point to be flipped to try anyway, because armwrestling a 5 meter tall monster that can quite casually lift 150 kilograms or so of gamorrean with one hand will never be dramatically appropriate in any campaign I'm running.

Yeah there are a lot of things that come up like this, especially when you get a new player to your games. I like that you said dramatically appropriate I think that's a great way to put it. In the past I would sometimes allow such things in the interest of being "fair" and collaborative but almost to an incident I ended up regretting letting continuity get damaged by such actions. Playing these games in a cartoony manner is a valid playstyle, but communicating to people that you aren't interested in that is often very difficult. I will try to prep people and give them outs, but many just won't listen until they get into the game and see that you are serious about being serious.

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2014 at 6:49 AM, mouthymerc said:

I think it comes down to what you believe as far as races go. On average, wookies tend to be stronger than humans, hence why they start with a higher Brawn. Now if you think that a wookie is always going to have the potential to be stronger than humans, then they should have a higher cap on Brawn than humans. But if you believe that any race has the potential to be just as Brawny (for whatever reasons) as any other then the cap needs to be equal across the board. I think the designers felt that while some races start with varying stats, they all have the same potential. So you could have a human that trains or through genetics can be just as strong as a wookie.

I was listening to Sam Stewart talk about this and he said that going above 6 starts to result in guaranteed success. For the purpose of playability they had to keep the Rancor at 6 for Brawn. This means that for purely meta reasons the cap needs to be 6. Meta and the game-space description are obviously at odds here because the average campaign played in this game undoubtedly contains PCs with 6 Brawn who are physiologically no where near the size of a Rancor.

This tells me that you can safely unlimber the actual lifting power/crush strength description from the Characteristic. Also I think in the same manner a droid or a cerean with an Intellect of 6 could be in some ways much better at certain types of problem solving/recall than a Human with the same score. An Ardennian with an Agility of 6 is maybe handling things with a dexterity humans are not capable of even with same Agility score.

To me the Characteristic score is mainly there for resolving checks. The description of a character's physical Strength is the domain of the narrative and not the number except in a very casual manner. There still needs to be some fluff here just because of the way the skill system works. So a normal Human with Brawn of 6 is a melee/brawn machine or some kind of an uncanny athlete. The Brawn of 6 is required to simulate their ability to deliver amazingly accurate and effective strikes, not to pick up X-wings and throw them.