About autofire: We played an encounter where a group of Tusken raiders with rifles attacked from atop of a cliff. At medium reange, in cover, one of the characters attacked them with a light repeating blaster. We found that, with some Setback Dice from cover (I used two, one for cover and one for elevation of the target), and with the added Difficulty Die from autofire, it wasn't very easy for the gunner to hit them.

Of course, if the Tusken Raiders were caught in the open by a character with a light repeating blaster, the fight would have been a short one. I think this works quite well.

About the jetpack: I'm not sure if the description of the jetpack is how it's intended to work in the setting. A character cannot maintain constant flight with this, but rather long jumps, short lifts etc. I would suggest that the jetpack rather works with the rules for the Move Maneuver, letting the user ignore obstacles (jumping over), ignore enemy cover (levetating up and shooting over) or close to Engaged quickly (charging into melee with a jetpack jump). This better reflects how it works in the movies, I think.

Eirik

EldritchFire said:

With explosions being tied to advantage there are going to be common scenarios where a player may choose to reduce their strain or push a boost/setback die into the next test…rather than activating Blast.  So grenades and other blast weapons (flame projectors, etc) are now less dangerous for use in tight quarters or a grand melee because you can always choose not to blow up your friends by spending advantage elsewhere.  Sure a GM can step in and rule that this isn't the case and that everyone gets hit…but then what's the point of the Blast special quality?

I think that Blast should be a passive quality.  It should equal the weapon's "base damage" and hit everyone in an engagement with no ifs ands or buts.  With that in mind, grenades, missles and other incendiary/explosive weapons should have their damage and other special abilities adjusted in order to keep these weapons from being instant engagement kills.

Thermal detonators already breach through most personal and some vehicle scale soak.  Do they really need to do 20 points of damage on top, as well as 15 blast?  They might as well be light grenades from Mom and Dad Save the World ("pick me up" would have to be stamped on each one of course).  TD's currently have me concerned over wealthy and well connected black market characters.  All they have to do is make a ranged light attack against their target….and the target will almost assuredly be evaporated…whether or not blast activates.  As the weapon is stated and as Blast works currently, the idea that a character could use a Thermal Detonator to surgically destroy a single participant in combat…is outside the realm of explanation in a contextual narrative sense. 

A weapon feared throughout the galaxy for its destructive potential….kills Moff Jangypants and none of the players fighting him because the character lobbing the device chose to spend his advantage on regaining a couple strain and pushing a boost die into his next pool….*wah wah waaaaaaaa sound*

TLDR; Blast should be passive and hit everyone in an engagement, blast damage should be adjusted accordingly, and thermal detonators need to be modified in some way or they will be the death of anything.

Callidon said:

I may be misunderstanding what you mean by this, but I think you may be misinterpreting the blast quality.  The description states:

"If the attack is successful and Blast activates, each character (friend or foe) Engaged with the original target suffers wounds…"

I don't read this to say the target also suffers blast damage, since I don't think the original target qualifies as a "character engaged with the original target".

But yeah, 20 damage plus breach is "bring me my brown pants" kind of scary.  Jabba knew he was in trouble with not-Boushh pulled out a TD.

-WJL

Yeah I worded it funky but I know that the blast isn't added onto the initial damage.  I was coming at it more from a standpoint of, it's already going to do whatever its damage is to virtually anything in the game by way of Breach…having gonzo bonkers damage is just atom-bomb-on-an-ant style overkill.  I don't have my book in front of me, but I don't recall seeing any foes in the back of the book that had wound thresholds that high in addition to massive vehicle level soak.

The thermal detonator needs to be terrifying certainly.  But it's a game changer currently, and with Blast working the way it does…can be used to simply remove a combatant from the chess board like a life line on Who Wants to be a Millionaire…"I'll use my Thermal Detonator Regis."  Maybe there is no way of reworking the thermal detonator without taking the 'He's holding a thermal detonator!" out of it as well.  However, I DO know that they will show up more often than lightsabers and with the output stats that it currently has…it might as well be stated up like Cthulhu "kills X characters per round" 

 Yeah, no amount of soak is gonna save ya from a TD, it looks like.  I re-read your post and see your point about it being activated, and I think theres some merit to it.  For TD's, maybe they should activate blast for all engaged targets automatically, and activating the blast quality would extend that out to all targets in short (nee' close) range.

Grenades with blast as written I think are fine.  You could use those advantages to recover strain or grant boosts/setbacks, but … why?  If you're tossing a grenade, aren't you trying to clear a group of enemies?  I guess I just don't see where players would reasonably choose that option in situations where they chose to use the grenade in the first place.  The alternate TD rule I described up there I think could help avoid that, or add a rule (house or official) that the first 2 advantages rolled on a grenade-like weapon attack must be used to active blast.

And, by the maker, the things got vicious 4 on it…  appropriate, but /shudder.

-WJL

The reason I brought it up, is that if someone has the choice to activate Blast…there's always going to be someone that chooses not to.  And I could see a scenario where a player lobs a grenade at a foe and chooses to save the adjacent friendly NPC from the grenade's wrath.  Also, hardwiring the advantage into Blast is sort of against the whole idea of spending Advantage and Threat, Despair and Triumph by choice.  At that point you might as well wrap it into Success or Failure. 

Maybe Blast would work better if it activated on a number of successes after the first? 

I dunno…I'm not trying to make mountains out of mole-hills.  I just know that even the best role players occasionally lean on the rules a bit harder than what "makes sense."  And I just don't like having to engage in those awkward "Yeah I know the rules say you can Scott…but I just really don't want you to."  The people I play with tend to throw popcorn and then move on.  Other GM's would find themselves in more hot water.

Callidon said:

I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing - grenades are really meant for groups of enemies - if you're going after a single foe there are better weapons to use, so it's not like PCs will use this abusively as the best way to hurt the opponent. I can see then using it as "positioning the grednade just right to get the bad guy but not the ally.

However, I think it'd be interesting to give the GM the option of activating a blast weapon with the same threat cost as the usual advantage cost to activate, for just this situation… in fact, if FFG don't use that as an official rule, I certainly will be in the games I'm GMing…

:)

 Just read the table of weapons closely in this week's patch notes.  Noticed that Breach was removed from lightsabers.

Seriously gotta disagree with this decision.  Those glowsticks carved the shit out of vehicles (Capital ship blast doors, AT-AT underbellies and speeder bike control surfaces) and industrial equipment like it weren't no thang.  Its gotta have at least pierce 5, but breach i thought was totally appropriate, and inherent to the weapon.

Not looking for a fight or argument about this in the forum, just expressing an opinion because I think it was errata'd poorly.  This is being house-ruled back into my game.

-WJL

LethalDose said:

I'm pretty sure the internal blast doors on a capital ship are not 'capital scale' in the sense that they are designed to withstand turbolaser battery fire.

But either way, it has already been mentioned elsewhere that the table was in error. Lightsabers retain breach 1 but lose defensive 2.

I still think breach is way off, but fine. :)

gribble said:

Callidon said:

Yeah, although in that case I'd just rule that they managed to aim the grenade such that it only got the opponent. After all, in that scenario they have at least one success, with one or more advantages, so things should be beneficial. At least with this rule, they always run the risk of hitting allies if the roll goes badly… :-) 

Found an odd inconsistency in the armor & Mod section.

The Optical Camofluage System explicitly states "… [it] is nearly useless on laminate and plastoid heavy armor…" (pg 126)

This attachment requires 2 hard points, but the the only armors that have 2 hard points w/o invoking mod talents like Jury-rig or tinkerer, are laminate and heavy battle armor (which I assume is equivalent to "plastoid heavy armor").

Can we get this errata'd to resolve this inconsistency?  Some options that make sense are:

• OCS only requires one HP
• Increase the HPs on Adverse Environment gear
• Add some other armor (Scout- or Commando-style) that the OCS is appropriate for and has 2 or more HP

Thanks!

-WJL

TRIPOD REQUIRED ON LIGHT REPEATER?: Beta page 109 states, "Light repeaters are tripod-mounted support weapons for….." This suggests a light repeater requires a tripod. The light repeater of Star Wars doesn't seem to require a tripod. Beta original page 125 and updates include a Bipod Mount that can be added to a light repeater suggesting even a bipod is not required. SOLUTION: Change the descriptive text for Light Repeaters to be something like, "are typically bipod-mounted support weapons for…".

NO HOLSTER?: A holster could be considered a mundane item such as shoes or gloves that doesn't need to be accounted for. However, we do have Backpacks (page 118) and even a Weapon Sling (page 123) that happens to be useable only for Ranged (heavy) weapons. A holster for Ranged (light) weapons seems appropriate. PROBLEM as written: Weapon Sling gives Quick Draw talent for a heavy weapon such as a rifle. Normally it takes a Maneuver to draw a weapon (page 130).  Two people with the same talents, one using a Heavy Blaster Rifle with a sling, another just a Hold-out Blaster - the Heavy Blaster Rifle wielder can ready the big rifle without a Maneuver, the tiny blaster can only be drawn with a Maneuver. SOLUTION: By default Ranged (heavy) requires an Action to ready from a default shoulder sling. Quick Draw talent or adding a Combat Sling reduces this to a Maneuver. Ranged (light) by default requires a Maneuver to pull from a standard holster or sheath. Quick Draw talent or Speed Holster/Sheath (imagine Han's holster or a knife in a forearm sheath) reduces this to Incidental.

PADDED BETTER THEN STORMTROOPER ARMOR: Cheap Padded Armor (ex: Hoth Rebel Soldiers) provides the same protection (0 Defense 2 Soak) as Laminate Stormtrooper Armor at 1/5th the price and less encumbrence! Laminate (Stormtrooper Armor) page 113 is described as armor that, "defelects and negates incoming damage." This goes along with the laser/blaster reflective ability of Stormtrooper armor described in the Star Wars mythos. The Defense ability of armor as described on page 113 states, "This reflects the armor's ability to deflect damage away from the user's body". Sounds like the defensive ability described of the Stormtooper armor on the same page, which has a 0 Defense. SOLUTION: Add 1 Defense for Laminate but only against Blasters and Energy Weapons. This makes the Laminate still weaker then Heavy Battle Armor (1 Defense against all forms of damage) while giving it an advantage over the cheaper and lighter Padded Armor.

Sturn said:

For a Light Repeater, it has a Cumbersome Rating of 4, which means you need a Brawn of 4 or better to be able to fire the weapon without suffer a set-back die.  Since most beings are going to have a Brawn of 2, maybe 3 at best, that means no tripod equals an increase in attack difficulty for each point of difference.  So for most folks, using the SW equivalent of a light machine gun means using a tripod or bipod, unless you're an exceptionally buff individual or are a good enough shot that an extra difficulty die isn't that big a deal.

Backpack and Utility Belts each increase your maximum encumbrance value, where a holster really wouldn't have much of a game effect.  Like you said, a holster is tantamount to a pair of gloves.  Also, the Weapon Sling has to be specially modified to grant the Quick Draw talent; on it's own it just makes a heavier weapon (like a light repeating blaster) a bit easier to carry around and use.

As for Laminate Armor, the primary perk it offers over the Padded Armor is that Laminate Armor has 4 Hard Points, which means room for upgrades.  The Padded Armor has 0 Hard Points, so no upgrading it at all.  In fact, I'd make it a GM ruling that Stormtrooper armor has already spent one of those Hard Points on the Enhanced Optics Suite, which gives an environmental edge against Rebel troopers that are wearing just Padded Armor.  And given how generally ineffective even Stormtrooper armor tends to be against blasters in the movies, giving it any sort of bonus against blasters doesn't really seem appropriate.

Donovan Morningfire said:

Donovan Morningfire said:

There is nothing in the beta book or updates about a weapon sling, "having to be specially modified to grant the Quick Draw talent." If you purchase a Weapon Sling, it grants Quick Draw for your weapon as written. I agree, if this is what you are saying, that it is a special sling, not just a shoulder sling but more akin to swat or current army slings that allow quicker access to the weapon, as in dangling from the hip or chest. So a special sling is allowed that is better then a simple sling. Why not for a holster also? Especially if it also fixes a problem.

I'm equating a simple holster or shoulder sling to gloves, a special speed holster equal to the more complex Weapon Sling. I can't see how anyone would support a Weapon Sling that makes a heavy weapon quicker then a light weapon to ready without something available for lighter weapons. The Weapon Sling is broken without something else since it can only be added to heavy weapons. If we keep the Weapon Sling there needs to be something that allows an even lighter weapon a similar sort of improvement, such as a speed holster or special sheath…..just like what is offered with the weapon sling. If not we get the issue of big weapons being quicker to pull out then smaller weapons. Broken.

Donovan Morningfire said:

Because it has often been described as refective of energy weapons? Padded armor has never been described as such. Stormtrooper armor was meant to be elite but is pretty much equal to the simple padded armor of the rebels. One can have more gadgets, the other is 1/5th the price and lighter. As is it doesn't seem to emulate the elite armor of the Stormtroopers in my opinion. It's a simple fix to add 1 Defense to blaster/energy weapons only. I don't think that imbalances anything. Adding a single Setback die (1 Defense) to Stormtrooper armor isn't going to suddenly have blaster bolts reflecting commonly off of the armor, especially when being shot at by the movie heroes.