One of my players is a pilot/mechanic/slicer. He's devoted heavily into pilot, especially. His aim is to acquire a speeder with mounted weapons and use that to zip around the battlefield while everyone else slugs it out on foot.

My gut tells me this may be a little too unbalanced. I understand he wants to contribute in all areas of the game, but I think this may make him a little too much "the star" while everyone else is a background character (a big problem I had with some other P&P RPGs).

Thoughts?

Well, if I were Darth Bad Guy, my first order of business in an encounter would be to blast that speeder.

I think making sure his speeder's weapons remain personal scale will go a long way towards maintaining a semblance of balance, but given he could likely get himself in and out of range every turn (2 maneuvers and an action) you'll be in a dilly of a pickle. If your encounters are built such that he couldn't use it every time, it'd probably avoid the problem of "the star."

Let him have the speeder. Let him spend time and money customizing it. And then, when he starts using it in combat, have at least one enemy be either armed with a missile tube or piloting an armed vehicle himself. And make sure that NPC is good enough to give your pilot a real run for his money; those vehicles are expensive to repair.

That being said, I don't think he'll be able to abuse it too much. A lot of combat takes place in locations where you simply cannot buzz around in a speeder, like aboard space stations, indoors, and so on. In fact, the only place he would realistically be able to fly an armed vehicle would be on uninhabited or sparsely populated planets - anywhere else the local police would confiscate the speeder without further ado.

The speeder bike in EotE's core has personal scale weapons on it, that can be a decent indicator of the type of weapon he should be able to slap on it.

Like Krieger22 said, using this thing anywhere is going to be a pain. I think a typical speeder is something like 9 feet long, so if he wants to move around anywhere that isn't a fairly open space, he'll probably need to make piloting checks constantly to avoid the environment or his allies. And one of those times, he'll end up either trashing his speeder or severely injuring himself or his allies.

For the weapon itself, if you're just taking the weapon from the speeder in the EotE core, a decent way of balancing is to say that there's a narrow cone of fire on it - so it wouldn't be like you're just standing and could easily shift your body around with a heavy blaster rifle.

You'd have to be careful with things like missile tubes or other vehicle-using enemies though, because it won't just be the speeder going up in flames, but the player too. And if the player on the speeder gets taken out, everyone else has the fun time of dealing with the enemy whose got his own speeder. I wouldn't say not to use those at all, but you'd need to make sure you don't set up a situation that's going to ruin it for everyone. Something possibly a little more commonplace would be a sniper of some kind who shoots the player directly to knock him off his bike.

You'd have to be careful with things like missile tubes or other vehicle-using enemies though

Another good reason to avoid these things is because when the heroes are victorious, they will instinctively pick up any of this loot that's left. My heroes have 3 light repeating blasters for this very reason.

The vehicle/personal scale interactions in this game are terrible. Your best bet is to keep any given encounter to one or the other. Consider that anyone mounting a weapon on a speeder is likely going for a vehicular weapon (auto-blaster most likely for only 3000 credits) and that will absolutely devastate personal scale opposition. In return, even missile tubes will do very little against an up-armored speeder.

I agree with others that it seems like he'd get limited use out of it, because there are only so many places where it'll be possible to zip around on a speeder-bike.

But if the player wants to invest in it, I suppose it's ok.

Personally I'd feel weird being in a party where most of us are on foot, and one guy is kinda riding alongside us on a speederbike... but if it works for the players, I don't see it as being too unbalancing.

Again, like others said, there are plenty of opportunities to offset its advantages so it's not TOO unbalancing, and it could provide a couple of cases for that player to shine and feel special.

I'd really talk it over with the player, but it seems OK to me.

I've given the same situation some consideration, as one of my players (the pilot/medic) is looking to build/buy her own speeder bike.

I've thought about allowing a character to (to use another game system's terminology) "ready an action," perhaps preceded by an Aim or Prepare Maneuver, so that they hold their fire until the speeder bike moves into range. This would allow characters to actually engage in battle with high-speed opponents. After all, Luke Skywalker engaged a speeder bike in melee combat!

If the Speeder bike is moving toward you, then wouldn't there just be a round where the bike has moved into Engaged range with you? (in the example of Luke w/ a lightsaber)

Wouldn't you just take your action then?

Just a thought... Why not give it a go? Set up an encounter where the players have access to an armed vehicle during a "dismounted" encounter and see if it works or not. If it does, you're clear, if it doesn't, have the encounter set up so that he can't take the speeder with him.

Honestly I think once you factor in terrain, vehicle difficulties, environmental effects, and general limitations and so forth you'll find the mounted player won't have the massive advantage it first appears he will have...

My gut tells me this may be a little too unbalanced. I understand he wants to contribute in all areas of the game, but I think this may make him a little too much "the star" while everyone else is a background character (a big problem I had with some other P&P RPGs).

Why not talk to the player about this? Express you concerns then try it out. If the speeder ends up unbalancing fights, talk to the player and recton the speeder out of existence. Give him something to make up for it.

Personally, I think it could be a good idea. There are some in-fiction restrictions on the use of an armed speeder and everyone needs to respect them. But if it works, it could be an awesome bit of competence porn on the part of the PCs as they take out hordes of baddies without breaking a sweat.

If the Speeder bike is moving toward you, then wouldn't there just be a round where the bike has moved into Engaged range with you? (in the example of Luke w/ a lightsaber)

Wouldn't you just take your action then?

That is the intention, yes, but strict adherence to rules-as-written might not allow for that with particularly speedy opponents (not necessarily speeder bikes; I haven't determined just how much ground they can cover with a single Maneuver). themensch referenced that possibility here:

... but given he could likely get himself in and out of range every turn (2 maneuvers and an action) you'll be in a dilly of a pickle. ...

And I have indeed seen such a thing occur in other game systems. In those systems, there are discrete options for acting outside your normal turn, such as holding your fire until/unless the target gets closer, but EotE does not seem to have anything like that in the CRB (if I missed it, I would appreciate being corrected).

The holding your action thing is basically changed in favor of the system's current turn system - where everyone rolls for initiative, and then the turns are distributed (1 player, then 3 enemies, then 4 players, then 1 enemy - for instance), and then the players can all pick which turns they want for that round as the round progresses.

... but given he could likely get himself in and out of range every turn (2 maneuvers and an action) you'll be in a dilly of a pickle. ...

And I have indeed seen such a thing occur in other game systems. In those systems, there are discrete options for acting outside your normal turn, such as holding your fire until/unless the target gets closer, but EotE does not seem to have anything like that in the CRB (if I missed it, I would appreciate being corrected).

I think you're correct that there's no mechanic for holding one's action; I would allow such a thing in an on-the-fly house rule though.

Why would you need to hold your action?

If the Speeder is flying towards you, there is usually going to be a round after the pilot of the speeder has moved and before he has the chance to move again, where the Speeder should be in the range band that you need for your attack.

Wouldn't you just take your action then?

Why would you need to hold your action?

If the Speeder is flying towards you, there is usually going to be a round after the pilot of the speeder has moved and before he has the chance to move again, where the Speeder should be in the range band that you need for your attack.

Wouldn't you just take your action then?

Ahh, but there's the rub - a clever adversary could spend 2 maneuvers to move - one to move into range, one to move out, and spend their action to shoot. Thus, the entire time they're in range of YOU is during their turn, so you'd have to have some sort of interrupt mechanic.

Why would you need to hold your action?

If the Speeder is flying towards you, there is usually going to be a round after the pilot of the speeder has moved and before he has the chance to move again, where the Speeder should be in the range band that you need for your attack.

Wouldn't you just take your action then?

Ahh, but there's the rub - a clever adversary could spend 2 maneuvers to move - one to move into range, one to move out, and spend their action to shoot. Thus, the entire time they're in range of YOU is during their turn, so you'd have to have some sort of interrupt mechanic.

I guess. In a game of mine I'd probably just have the adversary not do that, to give the player more of a chance.

Or else I'd hope the party had more than one range band available to them. If the party is engaged together, and they have only weapons that can shoot into one range band, or they can only attack a melee opponent also engaged with them, that's a tactical weakness.

The party could split up, separate from each other, and have weapons that can fire to Range Medium and Range Long. That could make it possible to overcome this tactic on the part of a speederbike.

Or the party could use the terrain:

• shoot the branches off a tree in front of the speeder bike
• shoot a power converter so it explodes and gives off sparks when the bike is nearby
• toss a grenade and hope it brings down a wall near the bike

etc

@ themensch:

Does my suggestion of using an Aim or Prepare Maneuver seem sufficiently quick and simple for the purpose? It seems to fit the narrative.

"They're coming back around for another pass!"
"I see them..." She lines up her shot, waiting until the repulsorcraft is almost on top of them.

PEW

The pilot jerks sideways, wounded, and the vehicle zooms off with no sign of returning.

@ progressions:

Those are excellent points, and your suggested tactics are very cinematic and clever. I also admit that such situations may come up rarely, if at all.

I don't mean to suggest the rules are deficient. Indeed, that it is so easy to come up with nifty mechanical tricks is a sign of quality. I simply wonder, as a GM, what the best ways are to use the system to portray what the characters are doing.

@RedfordBlade: Yeah, Aim and Prepare both seem applicable here, and by definition Prepare might just be the answer here. pg 203 is pretty clear on it actually.

@progressions: you definitely make some good points; I wouldn't bring this challenge up against a group of noobs, but my team is a hardened band of unkillable (sic) heroes who have yet to see a real challenge. Cholganna holds many surprises for them..... My example assumes a rider on a fast speeder with planetary-scaled weapons who would never need to get in the player's range, only in range for their own weapons. You have all the time in the world to line up a shot if nobody can shoot back.

Why would you need to hold your action?

If the Speeder is flying towards you, there is usually going to be a round after the pilot of the speeder has moved and before he has the chance to move again, where the Speeder should be in the range band that you need for your attack.

Wouldn't you just take your action then?

Ahh, but there's the rub - a clever adversary could spend 2 maneuvers to move - one to move into range, one to move out, and spend their action to shoot. Thus, the entire time they're in range of YOU is during their turn, so you'd have to have some sort of interrupt mechanic.

I haven't done a lot of vehicle combat so I may be wrong here, but wouldn't that cause Strain damage to the speeder bike? Which would really limit moving twice since they only have a few points of it.

Actually, that's right--isn't "Fly/Drive" a Pilot-Only Maneuver, and you can only do one of those in a turn?

I'm away from my book, but I think that the way you change your range band in relation to someone else is to do the Fly/Drive maneuver, and if that is limited to once per turn, then that could be relevant.

Page 232 of the core book spells it out: first, the speeder would take 2 strain, then so would the pilot. So yeah, you could only really pull this off by using planetary-scale weapons with their range bands. You'd kill your speeder after a couple turns otherwise.

So with the movement and taking strain in mind, I think a player on speeder wouldn't pose too much of a problem since they would already be limited to needing to be in an open enough area anyway. I would definitely keep to the personal range weapons though and wouldn't let them mount any kind of planetary scale weapons.