I know this was originally in last weeks errata, but i didn't catch it until preparing for my game today…

the change to Melee attacks always having a average difficultly… so if i'm understanding this, swinging my vibroblade at an aware and drunk cantina parton is average- and swinging my vibroblade at luke skywalker is also average? on Melee, and opposed check makes more sense in my mind (athletics maybe?)

I'm heading out for my first session now… so i'll get a better idea after that… hopefully char. creation doesn't take all our time today ;-) hahah

MilesD37 said:

Luke will have talents and Force powers that increase his defense, and the drunk will be, well, drunk. That should add a few [B] to your roll.

So the base difficulty is [P][P], but talents, powers, situation, etc can all modify your dice pool.

-EF

EldritchFire said:

Bingo!

And that's what is going to set a random goober on the street apart from a master combatant, the application of talents, defensive maneuvers (for which a highly skilled fighter won't suffer the inherent penalties quite as badly), and the Sense power for those with Force abilities.

Donovan Morningfire said:

Yep. The fact that I'm attacking Luke Skywalker or some random drunk doesn't change the basic skill required to wield a weapon in melee combat or to throw an effective punch.

I'm still surprised at the amount of lashback this has gotten from people. This is not a new concept. WEG was built exactly the same. Each type of weapon had a difficulty associated with it. Punching someone was always a Very Easy task. Hitting someone with a Lightsaber or a Vibroblade was always a difficult task. It was then further modified by the opponents abilities. Hell, even blaster fire difficulty was determined by how far away you are standing from someone else. Yes, they did have a chance to dodge and parry the blows, but unless they were devoting themselves entirely to that single action, they did so at reduced effectiveness. They didn't get to roll their full pool against every attack made against them.

And all that opposed checks are going to do is drag on a fight for several more rounds - something that goes against the highly cinematic nature of this kind of combat. Seriously - the stormtrooper mook has an Agility of 3. If you're using that for your basic difficulty, that suddenly makes it an incredibly difficult task for a character with little ranged combat training to shoot them from close range (normally a difficulty 1 task). That just doesn't fit the spirit or milieu of Star Wars, where legions of stormtroopers or battle droids fall to the heroes. And on the other swing of things, shooting a Hutt Crime Lord from any distance is now a Difficulty 1 check. It just doesn't jive to use opposed checks. It promotes an arms race type of scenario between the heroes and the GM, seeing who can shore up on their Defenses the most quickly, making themselves untouchable out of the gate. Suddenly you'll have a party of Rodian Bounty Hunter Assassins who have pumped their Agility to 5 and picked up Dodge with their XP, making it durn near impossible to land a blow against them.

Let the training be represented in talents like Dodge and Quick Strike, upgrading basic difficulty or adding bonus dice to the basic difficulty in certain situations.

*shrug*

Just my thoughts on the matter.

A couple thoughts regarding the changes to the Move power.

First, for the 1st Control Upgrade (dealing damage), since the Discipline roll is stated to be a ranged attack roll, that would mean that any extra successes rolled would deal additional damage, correct?  That's how it reads, but I've misread stuff in the Force chapter before, so just want to be sure.

Second, regarding th Move Basic power, as it stands it really is a glorified parlor trick, where the basic powers for Sense and Influence have at least some utility.  How about altering the wording to something along the lines of "object must be within close range and can only be moved a single range band."  This way, you've got Luke's attempts to call his lightsaber to his hand in ESB covered (I figure he had a Force Rating of 2 at best by that point, little to no Light Side Destiny to spend, and rolled all Dark Side FPs on his first attempt).

This change would require swapping out one of the Range Upgrades for something else with a Strength Upgrade (allowing the movement of Silhouette 5 objects) or a Magnitude Upgrade (allow the affecting of up to 6 targets) being the most promising choices to replace the Row 5 Range Upgrade if the basic power is updated as I suggested.

A slight amendment to the above based on some discussion in the Force Feedback thread.

For the Move Basic Power, simply have it so that you can affect an object that's out to Close Range, but can't move it past Close Range.  So you could move an object at Close Range to yourself (Engaged), or something from your hand (Engaged) out to Close Range.