Yes, melee weapons have hard points. I believe the Vibro-axe has 3 of them, as that was the weapon I was looking to upgrade.

Venthrac said:

Yep, agreed. One of my players said the same thing. Coupled with the reduced damage for melee weapons, it really makes melee a second-class citizen compared to ranged weapons.

Yeah, I was pretty surprised to see the Vibro-axe go form +6 all the way down to +3. Now that's a nerf (herder)!

Venthrac said:

I kind of agree that +6 was too high, but I think they went too far in the other direction. IMO, just 1-2 more points of base damage ( to +4 or +5) is about right., when wielded by a Brawn 3-4 character. If the devs are worried about the optimised brawn 5-6 characters then maybe +4 is the sweet spot.

ON ATTACHEMENTS

Questions

Is it just me or does the Spread-Barrel attachment seem pretty underwhelming compared to the spinbarrel and marksmen barrel attachments?? and its even more expensive !!

A question: When attaching an underbarrel flame or granade attachment, does firing that attachment gain the benefits of other attachments to the weapon ei. forhand grip, scope etc … or modifiers from talents such as Juryrigging +1 dam. ? - Essentially I guess the question is whether the underbarrel attachement (ei. flamer) is another weapon or simply a modification allowing the attached weapon to fire in a different mode?? - I lean towards the latter, since they are listed under attachments rather than weapons …but … - what do u guys think?

Wish list

Is it just me .. or shouldnt bi-pod and tri-pod have a level of brace as a modifcation?! (I mean a bi-pod irl is a pretty common attachment to a heavy sniper riffle)

Boehm said:

I think blast is a pretty useful [albeit, situational] quality to add.  Maybe the price could be tweaked, but overall I think it works fine.

Boehm said:

I think the attachments that function as weapons separate from the weapon they are attached are just that: separate weapons with their own stat blocks.  For this reason, there should not be some blanket statement that states all weapon attachments and mods affect all weapons installed.  The bonus from some attachements, like multi-optic sight and forearm grips that you mention, make sense to apply to other installed weapons, but barrel attachments and any damage or pierce mods applied to attachments not involved in the installed weapon should not apply.  

In short, it seems it should be handled case-by-case.  I don't think using the attached weapons are the same as using the base weapon in a different mode.

Boehm said:

I think this depends on how you read the use of Brace, which removes a setback die from environmental conditions or other "disruptive physical obstacles".  In a shifting physical environment, the bipod could be useful, but I think it would do more harm than good.  Brace seems more appropriate to apply to weapon slings and harnesses.  I prefer the way it the bipod is handled in RAW, reducing cumbersome when fired from prone.

-WJL

 I guess I would just love for there to be more attachments …the bipod example was just because as of now its useless unless u really need to reduce the cumbersome rating as it is now there is not really much choice as in which attachments you have the option of attaching ….but I guess we will get a gear book or more options in the next more warlike book 

 Oh yeah, there will be way more attachments in future supplements, to be sure. The system in place is the best weapon modification system I've seen yet in any Star Wars game, ever.  Having the system there to begin with is massively important, even if the selection of starting mods available in the corebook is relatively modest.

In regards to the bipod and sniper rifles, note the marksman barrel gives the weapon its attached to "Cumbersome 2".  This won't affect many players, but some snipers (Bothans?) would want the attachment.

Maybe the marksman barrel should bestow "Cubersome 2" or increase the weapon's cumbersome rating by one, whichever leads to a higher cumbersome rating.  

-WJL

LethalDose said:

I still cant help feel that Spread-Barrel would seem more right if it was like this:

* Gain a boost die on Engaged & Close range

* Increase difficulty by 1 on all ranged beyound Close range

(mods: blast+2, dam 0-2 etc)

OR perhaps even like this for a more sawn off shotgun feel

* Gain 2 boost dice on Engaged & Close range

* Reduce damage by 1

* Increase difficulty by 1 on all ranged beyound Close range

(mods: blast+2, dam 0-2 etc)

--> This would effectively make it a sawn off shotgun like mod - making it easier to hit due to boost dice, doing comparable damage (since success add to damage), with greater chance of knocking people down etc …

I love this game so far.

Concern: I would like to add my voice to those who think auto fire it overpowered. I don’t have a problem with a game where everyone is blasting away with big beefy cannons but it is not a good fit with the setting.

Suggestion: I have read several suggestions. Perhaps a different weapons need to be nerfed differently. Lowering the damage of the Heavy blast rifle. The B-2 or Droideka battle droid carry blasters which spits out a lot of smaller blasts.

Increasing the cumbersome rating of the light and heavy repeater would make them vehicle weapons which aren’t much help in a bar fight.

Bones1968 said:

Admittedly, the current autofire mechanic would be much more palatable if the weapons that had AF had lower base damage.  however, AF only appears on the 2 heaviest blaster weapons and one of the four weapons with 10 damage.

The real problem with balancing the current AF mechanic by reducing the base damage of the AF weapons is that to reduce the base weapons' damage scores enough to make a reasonable differences, they would become much less effective against targets with high, or even moderate soak scores.  Now, if we change the AF rules to account for all the damage in a single hit, damage would only be reduced by soak once, mitigating the problem, but would only allow the attack to generate a single critical hit on the target.  

Also remember the AF weapons function in single fire mode, too.  So reducing base damage would affect them there as well.

To balance all of this, we could perhaps leave AF with a cost of 1 adv, but base damage of the weapon when in AF mode is reduced by X.  This solution has a lot of balance problems, too, since weapons with higher damage scores are much less affected than the weapons with lower damage scores.

Are the changes worth it to make the mechanic work right?  They're solutions that bear attention, but I feel they substantially increase complexity.  IMO, simply increasing AF's activation cost is simpler.

-WJL

I could see lowering the Heavy blast rifles damage and make it take two advantages to activate auto-fire. I don’t like the aesthetics of star wars characters looking like a Space Marine Devastator. I would just ban the weapon as GM but an autofiring blaster would be a nice option if it didn’t blow away the other weapons in damage output.
 

I actually hate the mechanic of needing Advantages to use Autofire. You can't flip a selector switch without requiring an Advantage?

Sure, you do that by taking another difficulty die on the combat check to attack - at least that's how I interpret it (no auto-fire without declaring - flipping the switch as an incidental - and taking another difficulty die). The advantages spent implies additional hits. Which makes sense. Just because you have flipped on the auto-fire setting doesn't mean you hit twice, three times or four, not even once. First you have to hit the culprit, then you need some amount of luck/skill to hit more than once - ie the advantages.

Grenades and Encumbrance:

Ok so Frag Grenades, Flash Grenades, and Thermal Detonators have an encumbrance of 1.  Is that 1 for each individual grenade are 1 for a few grenades? Since the Enc. Threshold is 5+brawn, not a lot of people will be able to carry a few grenades with them if its 1 per grenade!

I personally think they should have a encumbrance of 0 and gain a encumbrance of 1 when carrying 10 or more.

Comments?