Last night was our third session…

Warning: further spoilers for Crates of Krayts adventure

This session was the fight atop the TechTank platform with the Cordel's Chain gang of bounty hunters. I had initially expected the session to finish the adventure, with both the fight and the chase/starship combat off the planet. However, due to a slightly late start, and the combat taking much longer than expected, we only got through the fight. In total, the combat took over 2 hours to complete. At least some of that was due to unfamiliarity with the rules and issues with looking up things which have been changed (see below for more detail), and I don't necessarily have anything against a long fight, but it was unexpected.

Generally speaking, the combat seemed to flow really well, and - despite the length - it felt very exciting and cinematic, it was tense for the players and everyone seemed to have a good time. On that basis, you'd have to say it was overall a success. There were a few things noted by myself and the players, that that were problematic, weird or just generally could have been improved:

1) The combat started with a majority of the bounty hunters winning initiative. Cordel moved out from the turbolift shaft, and opened up on autofire against the PCs, targeting three of them (I was too scared to target a single PC - with good reason as it turned out). He rolled pretty well, even with the 4 difficulty dice (which I think the PCs upgraded once using a destiny point) for medium range, autofire and walking fire and hit 2 PCs. With a couple of additional successes and his talent adding to damage, he did 15 damage to two PCs, dropping one and badly injuring another. So while autofire itself wasn't particularly devastating in this case, if I had chosen to fire at a single target - an easier roll as he wouldn't gain the extra difficulty die for walking fire - he would have inflicted at least 30 wounds and probably outright killed one PC. So that really reinforced that autofire, at least when shooting at a single PC, really needs to be toned down a little. Also, the PC going down the first round resulted in him pretty much sitting out the whole fight - the other PCs were too busy surviving to apply a stimpack. It was a bit anti-climactic for him, and resulted in the overall difficulty of the encounter being much harder for the group. I suggest adding an additional use for spending a destiny point - "only a flesh wound" - that allows a PC who would be dropped to negative wounds by an attack to instead be reduced to 1 wound. Sure, it might result in the PCs "sandbagging" the destiny points a bit more, but to some extent that occurs already, and IMO it's better than the alternative of one player "sitting out" a combat.

2) Unfortunately for the PCs, two of them immediately broke for the cover of the ship, leaving the downed and injured PC to fend for themselves (to be fair one was a pilot who was intending to fire up the engines to make their escape, the other was going for the ship's guns). The one remaining standing PC in the open decided to go balls to the wall, quick drew his vibroknives and charged Cordell. Here there were a couple of things noted. Firstly, he PC asked if there was any benefit from charging. We couldn't find anything in the rules, but I ended up giving him a boost die to his attack, given that he'd taken 2 stress to gain an additional maneuver (one to close from medium to short, then another to engage) and advanced from quite a distance. We all thought - though perhaps only due to experience with other systems - that there really should be a "charge" combat maneuver. Secondly, the vibroknives seemed fairly ineffective against Cordell. Admittedly they are one of the lower damage weapons, but the PC was only doing 2-3 damage per hit with a good roll. This was also something we saw in a heavy blaster pistol "duel" between one henchman and one PC, both sitting in cover on opposite sends of a corridor on the ship, both aiming each round and shooting at each other, and both doing on average 3-4 wounds per hit. This meant that both combats took longer than expected, and both had the opponents suffering 4-5 hits before going down which didn't feel particularly cinematic. Perhaps the reduction in damage from the update 2-3 weeks ago needs to be looked at again, or something done to reduce the impact of soak?

3) Between the gang's airspeeders, the missile launcher and the PC's ship, the combat had a lot of mixed character/vehicle scale combat. Here the rules were a little unclear to us - though that could have been mainly due to general unfamiliarity with vehicle rules as this was our first exposure to vehicle scale combat. Firstly the whole range thing - I just ruled that everything was at Close vehicle scale range - pretty sure this was the correct ruling, but it was a little confusing having to work with the two scales, especially seeing as a lot of the NPC stats still referenced Close range in the book (see below about stats). Secondly, it wasn't immediately clear what the difficulty of firing vehicle scale weapons at characters should be. In the end I ruled that it used the starship scale difficulty (based on Silhouette difference), meaning that it was pretty difficult. That seemed to work out pretty well as when they did hit they were pretty devastating. Thirdly, the vehicle scale damage, when it hit a character was truly devastating - like 30-40 wounds devastating. Also I thought about having the bounty hunters shoot their pistols at the PC's ship at one point, but it was literally impossible for them to hurt it (needing to do over 40 character scale damage). You can argue that is as it should be, but I think it's a little over the top. Vehicle/starship scale weaponry perhaps needs to be rescaled as 5, rather than 10, times the armour/damage at character scale. At least that way there is a chance - however slim - of surviving or hurting a vehicle. If necessary, bigger weapon damage and armour values can be increased to keep higher ratios at the top end and prevent a PC with a blaster rifle from taking down a Star Destroyer. Finally, the new starship actions were used a couple of times by the Pilot, who sat in the ship cockpit and generally avoided the fight. He initially tried "plotting a course" out of the tank and pipes for their hasty retreat, then when the airspeeders showed up he spent a couple of actions angling the shields. These worked really well and gave him something to do in a combat when he otherwise would have been twiddling his thumbs. I should point out that the first thing he did was start up the ship - I couldn't find a rule for that in play, but I do vaguely remember reading one. It either should be added (if there isn't one) or made a bit more prominent for ease of location during play. I ruled an easy (1 difficulty) pilot check, with a setback die for the stress of combat.

4) We again noticed a few foibles with the dice math. Again there were quite a few instances of failed rolls with advantages, which we struggled a bit with interpreting. In at least 2 or 3 rolls there were failed rolls with 4+ advantages - in one case the player rolled 8 advantages with no successes! I ruled that in that case it essentially functioned like a Triumph and "turned the tide of battle" by scattering one of the minion groups for a few rounds, causing them to lose their actions pinned down in cover. By the rules that isn't possible, but it seemed like the simplest and quickest result. The main issues here were, on a miss, most of the high cost advantage triggering things (weapon qualities, crits, additional hits) can't be triggered, which leaves a big pool of advantages to spread around a bunch of minor things. Coupled with our unfamiliarity with the rules, this meant going through the tables looking for lots of smaller effects to apply. The unfamiliarity will improve, but one player mentioned that it seemed like play would never get that fast when you're constantly referencing tables. Secondly, a lot of the effects either don't make sense in some situations, or become very repetitive (one PC spent three turns in a row essentially aiding another PCs attacks with advantage - that may be the way the system is intended to work, but it seemed a little boring in play). Perhaps a longer list of things that can be triggered (to provide variety), but a limit of one additional effect that can be applied (to speed things up) is needed?

5) Finally, the stats weren't helpful. There is no provided updates yet for the stats in the adventure, but they all reference (at a minimum) now incorrect weapon stats, which I had to correct on the fly. More troublesome, the stats for the airspeeder weapons seemed completely out of whack. The weapon was named after a character scale weapon (repeating blaster), but had similar stats (close range, 3 damage) to a vehicle scale weapon. In the end I just used the stats for a vehicle scale autoblaster… Also, it'd be really helpful to have a "tactics" section for the NPCs, that provide suggested uses for advantage on rolls. For example, Cordell should say "if engaged, purchases a maneuver to fly away if possible, otherwise adds [boost] dice to allied characters attacks representing orders that he gives to his gang". As it was, picking things to spend it on during play got time consuming and difficult to be constantly thinking up descriptions for what was happening. Finally, the Adversary talent seemed to work well, although I had limited opportunity to really run it through it's paces. Due to one PC going down before he got to act, the combat became a lot more difficult and I only added Adversary 1 to Cordell and none to the henchmen. It seemed to do the job intended - he was noticeably more durable and harder to hit than the henchmen, without being overpowering. I still have reservations about it being a Talent, but that is a separate issue from it's gameplay effect.

It seems like a lot of criticism, but it's worth repeating that overall the combat was really fun and enjoyable, and it seemed pretty cinematic (other than the low damage thing resulting in too many hits to drop foes in a couple of situations). The players all seemed to walk away from the session "on a high" and by the end they all seemed to have a much better grip on the rules and things were flowing fairly smoothly. A couple still seem to have reservations about the math, and the difficulty to succeed on a check compared with the relative ease of generating advantages, but on the whole it went well.

Tune in next fortnight for our thoughts on Vehicle combat…

So, I'm the player who decided to go all stabbydeath on the big bad in the session outlined above. It seemed like the right idea at the time and I still think it was, given how amazingly good he seemed at shooty stuff. If I hadn't picked up armor during chargen he would have dropped me as well.

I'm really feeling like melee weapons need a readjustment, they are simply not as good as ranged, in any way shape or form, when you have a melee based specialty like the Marauder making their primary form of attack a "have not" isn't a good thing. Maybe an option would be to up the Vicious and Pierce ratings so that while the damage remains low, stabby things have a better chance of cutting through ballstic armor. Kinda like in real life even. Also I feel like there are a lot of melee weapon upgrades missing I think theres one possible upgrade, and its like 5000 credits. :/

Dual Wielding feels off to me as well. I'm getting an additional purple die for difficulty, with no actual improvement to my attempt roll, just an expanded crit option. That seems out of balance somehow. I can't quite put my finger on a fix, but at some point I worked out that the math on attacking with 2 weapons just didnt make any sense so I stopped doing it. Not having that as an option for my character kinda bummed me out. Off the top of my head (so this may be totally imbalanced) is let the extra damage per success rolled get increased autimatically when dual wielding rather than making the player spend advantage to do it, something along those lines. It just feels wrong to get a tangible disadvantage with no tangible advantage to balance it out or make it appealing.

The upside of doing low damage, is that I got to play with the Advantage I was generating, which let me do things like disable the BBEG's jetpack to keep him from jumping away and shooting me, potentially disarming him, which may have been a better idea given the potential hurt he could dish out with his weapon (now mine!!!), knocking him prone and triggering crits, so that all felt really good from a narrative/cinematic point of view.

Starship weapons vs mooks = good fun, I did have to ask another player nicely NOT to shoot into my melee combat with the ship guns, I didn't trust his rolls enough for that.

I still don't know if I'm 100% onboard with the dice mechanic as a whole. It feels punishingly hard to really achieve anything tangible. I don't know if we have completely built our characters wrong, or are doing it wrong but I don't think we should feel as inept as we seem to be.

I do agree with CaptainStabby that unless your character is heavily primed for melee (namely, having a Brawn of 4 or better), then attacking in melee is sub-par to ranged attacks, even if using a Vibro-Ax or Vibro-Sword (both weapons with a healthy Pierce rating).  Even a Brawn 3 character with those weapons will be dealing only a bit more damage than a random schlub with a heavy blaster pistol, and if they choose something other than BH/Assassin or HG/Marauder as their starting career/spec, they're going to be even further behind the curve.

Honestly, I'm thinking the damage of the Force Pike and Vibro-Knife/Axe/Sword could all stand to be increased by 1 point, maybe the Combat Knife too.  It would help make melee weapons a bit more dangerous but not quite as potent as they were initially.  I'm not saying a random Wookiee with a Vibro-Ax should be routinely dealing more raw damage than someone with a blaster rifle, but the I don't think the disparity should be quite as much as it currently is, particularly as melee combat has the added restriction of having to reach the Engaged range band, something that blaster wielders don't have to worry about, permitting them a slightly greater damage per round average simply due to not having to spend one or more turns just getting into melee range.

Yeah, we "acquired" two jetpacks, one of which I feel like is going to become a "man portable Vibro-Ax delivery system". Not exactly the route I wanted to go with my character, but I imagine the failures I'll roll while attempting to pilot the jetpack with no actual pilot skill will be Fett off the side of the Sailbarge worthy. :)

I don't mind the scales to be tipped towards Ranged combat myself. This is Star Wars, not much in regards to melee going on unless you are a Jedi or Wookie. I DO however hope a player spec'd for melee is a capable character and not broken. A character not spec'd for melee grabbing a vibroblade and charging should be shot down quickly. A character spec'd for doing such through should have potential.

As for the dual-wielding, I think it is simple/elegant as is. Dual-wielding is more difficult with a potential payoff of an unnoticed extra dagger being stuck in your opponent's eye/gut/throat (a critical).

In spirit I agree, I guess. But if being a melee monkey is an option, it needs to be a viable option, not a completely crap one that noone is going to use because guns are just "better". If it's in the game it ought to be a viable choice, otherwise just ditch it.

I disagree pretty strongly on the dual wield part though. Simple/Elegant is all well and good, but the math doesnt work out to being worth it, simple as that. It feels like there needs to be some sort of static benefit to doing it, hell make it a talent or something. I'm perfectly fine with that, but as it stands there isnt a point in doing it.

CaptainStabby said:

well - dual wield does make sense …but only if you are VERY VERY good … at that level an extra difficulty die isnt that much of a problem compared to giving u an extra hit … its only bad because this is beta and we dont yet have anyone running around with Agi 5, Ranged 4 ;) at that time gunning down minions with your dualvielded heavy blaster pistols should be triviel :D

Boehm said:

Which is how it should be.

Sturn said:

While I do agree that the scales should be tipped towards ranged combat, it's a question of degree.  As I noted above, the ranged combatant doesn't have to spend manuevers to get into melee range, allowing them to aim while the Vibro-Ax wielding Wookiee has to charge at the same foe.  Plus, the ranged combatant can take advantage of cover, something the melee fighter can't do.

I honestly think that if the PCs have to fall back to wielding melee weapons, they shouldn't completely suck if they're not super-spec'd for it, which is kinda the case now.

Venthrac said:

The bounty hunter in my game was the only one to not get extra obligation for money, and it honestly made it a little hard for him to purchase Ranged (heavy) weapons.  However, the good side was he went with a slugthrower and has basically turned his character into a cowboy.

Sturn said:

Yeah, I don't actually have a problem with the dual wield rules myself - in fact I actually like them. Pretty much all iterations of dual wielding in every system I've ever played had traded accuracy (in terms of penalties to hit) for additional damage if you roll well and manage to score an extra hit. The rules in EotE are 100% consistent with that - just like in D&D/Saga or the W40k rpgs, characters who aren't specialised in melee fighting with 2 weapons should *expect* to miss more often when dual wielding, but to occasionally have a spectacular success - if anything, I feel the EotE system is less punishing than other systems I'm familiar with. One additional difficulty die isn't that crippling, and trading 2 [adv] to essentially double your damage output is a good trade. Sure, it's not as good as autofire (which largely uses the same rules but reduces the [adv] cost), but I think the general consensus on that is that it's too good and needs to be toned down.

The main problem I had with melee combat (combat in general really) is that the damage values just felt a bit too low, given how high the soak values were (then again, the unarmoured PC dropped pretty easily, so maybe it's just a problem with the specific PCs and NPCs - who admittedly were meant to be heavily armoured bounty hunters…)

Hey Gribble,

Great writeups, thanks much! You should consider taking all your bold-faced sentences and breaking them out in a separate post as core feedback items. Such a list would be a quicker read and perhaps more acessible for the designers.

I like how you handled charging. The only change I would personally make is to either make it cost some Strain to charge, or perhaps to add a Boost die to attacks made against the charging character until the start of his next turn, to reflect the fact that the charger is recklessly going all-out on offense, and thus ignoring his own self-defense.

On the whole, these writeups have been very informative and exposed some areas where the game could still use some work. This makes me glad we're getting the chance to beta the game.

Again, kudos and thanks for the work you're putting in.

Venthrac said:

Yeah, if the PCs weren't already in such a bad way, I probably would have done the same (most likely granting opponents a [boost] die to attacks against the charging character). To be honest though, the PCs kind of needed all the help they could get in this one, so I didn't mind just making it an advantage for them.

That's one of the things I really like about this game - both of these (granting the PC a [boost] die to his attack, and granting opponents [boost] dice to their attacks) are just applying the rules a written, i.e.: giving character's [boost] die for advantageous situations, and don't require a special rule for charging. Makes things really easy to put together on the fly, which suits my style of GMing…

I always felt like WFRP3E's greatest strength was supporting narrative through flexible mechanics. I am very glad ot see the same system make it into a Star Wars game, because I think it's a great fit.

Last night was a short session to wrap up Crates of Krayts:

Again - SPOILERS BELOW

The session began with the heroes leaving Nar Shadda with Sinasu and the Crates aboard. After a bit of healing by the medic, repairs on the ship and looting of the captured bounty hunters, the ship's sensors spotted the two cloakshape fighters closing. There was general disappointment expressed at the healing/repair rules. Both times only 1-2 points were healed, which seemed kind of a let down. Admittedly the medic hadn't really specialised in it, rolling 1 ability and one proficiency die (plus a boost from his medkit). The mechanic however was much more specialised - maybe it was just a bad roll, but it also happened a second time (see below). The PCs even expressed that it wasn't really worth having a medic in the party as stimpacks were so much better, despite the cost and limited-use nature. Perhaps healing/repair needs a bit of buffing? Maybe heal/repair a number of wounds/trauma equal to the medics/mechanics Int plus extra successes, rather than 1 plus extra successes? Or would that make optimsed healers/mechanics (which the healer wasn't but the mechanic is at least somewhat) too good?

As the YT-1300 the group flies only has range short sensors, I ruled that the combat started at short range. I used the starfighter wing (minion) rules, and they seemed to work pretty well. I was hoping to get an opportunity to use the chase rules, but it didn't eventuate (see below).

The player's ship started off at speed 2, and the pilot was a little frustrated he couldn't do any of the "cool" maneuvers. Even when he sped up to speed 3, he couldn't even attempt to gain the advantage. It also seemed really weird that you had to be travelling fast (at least as fast as his ship could) to "stay on target", which seems like it should be easier the slower you go… The pilot did manage to keep himself busy accelerating/moving/angling shields and (eventually) taking evasive action. Perhaps the speed restrictions on the starship maneuvers need another look, or at least some further maneuvers/actions added that can be taken by slower ships? After all, the PCs will usually be starting with a speed 3 ship…

Gererally the other PCs found actions to keep them busy which was really good - much better than pretty much any other "startship combat" that I can remember in a RPG. I did have one player ask a couple of times if they could act as "co-pilot" and also execute pilot-only maneuvers. I pointed him to the co-pilot starship action, but it wasn't really what he was looking for (particularly as the pilot wasn't really making any rolls - just maneuvering - so upgrading his next check wasn't going to achieve anything).  Perhaps the co-pilot should also be able to use (perhaps limit to one?) pilot-only maneuvers? Perhaps only with a successful check?

The cloakshapes managed to hit the PC ship with concussion missiles that did a bit of hull trauma to the PCs ship - around 8 - enough to worry them, but not enough to put them in serious danger. The PCs gunner got one hit on the cloakshapes as well, doing 5 points to them. Mechanically, that all seemed to work pretty well, although there was a weird string of rolls where 3 attacks in a row (PCs attack with first ship gun, cloakshape's first attack, PCs attack with second ship gun) either hit or missed and generated a threat, resulting in the weapon going offline for a round. Hilarity ensued as the gunner ran up and down the YT-1300's central ladder each round between out of commission guns…

:)

The mechanic again tried to repair the ship (I ruled that this was a separate encounter from the first repair, which occurred effectively at the end of the second encounter). He again got a modest result (around 2-3 hull trauma repaired, which seemed pretty underwhelming for a relatively good result on something he could only do once).

The PCs actually ended up finishing the combat with two really weird dice rolls. Both were failed rolls, with a lot of advantage and/or triumph symbols. The first was a coerce check, where a couple of the PCs had the hostage bounty hunters in the airlock, and threatened them to call off the figthter. I ruled that although the leader wasn't cowed, the pilots of the fighters had the commline open to their boss and were directly influenced instead. The second was a mechanics check to boost the shields (which came up failed with two triumph!), which we all kind of scratched our heads at for a bit until someone suggested that the shields flared up and looked as though they were acting on overpower, even though they weren't. I ruled that both results combined resulted in the cloakshapes breaking off pursuit. While it was cool that these sorts of checks could have that result in a combat encounter, it took a while for us to puzzle though an in-game explanation for the rolls and it seemed a little weird that the encounter was ultimately resolved/defeated by two failed rolls…

Overall, short but enjoyable. There were still a few weird bits where the dice results didn't really seem to fit into either the narrative and/or the results were counter-intuitive to what we expected (i.e.: two failed rolls ultimately winning the day). I think that is probably our biggest gripe at the moment - the results of the rolls just don't seem to match up with what we expect - either in terms of story or game. We all agreed to continue the campaign for a while - at least a second adventure which I now have to prepare…