I loved theory-crafting 4e characters just for the hell of it because there were so many goddamn options.
I certainly have more character concepts for Star Wars characters than I've got games to play them in, but it's not to the point where I've got dozens of character sheets waiting for a moment to go, because when it comes to Star Wars I like to try and bring a concept to the table that works with the campaign being proposed and also works with what other players are bringing to the table.
With 4e, you can pretty much show up with anything and as long as the players know what they're doing, it can be made to work.
I loved theory-crafting 4e characters just for the hell of it because there were so many goddamn options.
I certainly have more character concepts for Star Wars characters than I've got games to play them in, but it's not to the point where I've got dozens of character sheets waiting for a moment to go, because when it comes to Star Wars I like to try and bring a concept to the table that works with the campaign being proposed and also works with what other players are bringing to the table.
With 4e, you can pretty much show up with anything and as long as the players know what they're doing, it can be made to work.
I just finished my first campaign of my current Dark Heresy group and I noticed every time I try to do boss fights as an ending they are always underwhelming. I want them to feel challenged, beaten to an inch to their life but earned victory. But they fought a Heretek group and a wild Daemonhost and one of the heretek lieutenants were a bigger problem than the Daemonhost. It doesn't help that my dice seem to be consistently unlucky. I don't want to kill my PCs but I want them to feel in danger.
Although basically they were only able to take off a third of their health by chipping away (I have a home rule that shots do at least 1 damage even if they hit under armor threshold if they hit), and another third was taken off by one guy using all five of his fate points in one turn to add +50 ballistic skill bonus to a heavy stubber that he had no training in and was hampered by darkness (his character creation was extremely lucky) which might not be in the rules, but it felt appropriate. Maybe I should make it BS/WS +25 to burn a fate point. The last third was me misunderstanding what the superscript versus standard script on damage meant. Whoops. That's how one of my PCs went into the critical btw. I gave an Omnissian axe 1D10+7+7 due to misreading. So a little OP. They used that to kill the thing at last.
Although had I not accidentally fudged the rules and the dice had not rolled as badly, they would all probably be paste now. Hmm. Thematically appropriate, but anticlimactic
And I just remembered I forgot they were supposed to take fear tests every time they see the thing. I only made them roll once.
I also feel I rushed through the campaign a little too fast so they wouldn't get bored or stuck. The teo that I ran most of the campaign are new players so I felt I needed the ball rolling.
I also did not really create notes to work with until the third, last session which helped immensely.
I think for the next campaign I'm going to pick and choose bits of other Dark Heresy campaigns, but to change the setting, I'm going to have them go into xenos ruins on Desoleum that a smuggler, who they're basically coercing to work with the Inquisitor, has done runs on before. I could make it Indiana Jonesy, lots of traps, exploration, maybe dealing with unknown settlements and messing with artefacts. I still want them to collect the pieces of a map to a thing like the
Necron pylons from Eisenhorn to destroy the tyrant star, which would release Malal (who exists in my campaign [I took the idea from Text-To-Speech Device])from his prison and break his matter into parts around the system causing general warp fuckery, insanity, and having them, their successors, and other Warbands of the Inquisitor to clean up the mess or face a new Chaos god resurrected. They would have to deal with facing the idea of working for a radical inquisitor and wondering if fucking about with xenos and warp stuff is really worth an unknown endgame
Let me begin by saying that I know nothing about Dark Heresy, however, I know something about Boss fights and something that's not failed me yet is the three tier boss fight. You take your Boss's HP, cut it in thirds, and build three encounters that happen back to back to back. The first fight is straight-forward. The boss has is normal group of Minions, uses ok attacks but nothing really ass kicking. Once you get him down that first tier, switch it up. The Boss now knows the group is a real threat so he'll unleash new, more powerful attacks, a new batch of stronger minions arrive and/or something happens that sets of some environmental danger that everyone has to deal with or move to a new area, setting up tier two as a chase scene/battle. The last tier is when the Boss is desperate. He'll unleash powerful powers that damage even his own people, move more around the map, use the last tier's environmental danger as his own weapon, and near the end, maybe even try to escape. To steal from 4E terminology, stuff like auras that boost his minions when they are close to or engaged with the PC as him can be great passive powers that start tier two that add bonus danger to the fight.
Example: Party in a Fantasy setting have to take on a young dragon with some kolbold minions. Simple fight happens in the center of an old temple. Tier one, the dragon stays back, using Breath attacks while the kolbolds block the forward movement of the melee PCs. Tier two, the dragon sets a large rune on the ground on fire and suddenly the ground breaks apart into large chunks and starts floating. Now, to move from rock to rock is a Dex/Jumping test, while the dragon is flying around taking swaps at everyone during his fly-bys. The minions from last round or still there but don't move from their rocks unless it is needed. Tier Three the floating chunks crash into a massive tower with a flat top and the dragon attacks with fire breath, claws, and everything three rounds or so flies in the air and makes a carpet bomb run of breath attacks on everyone. The dragon might have a counter-attack so it can deal more damage each round. The fight is visually exciting and challenging as strategy has to change on the fly.
So I ran the FFG Force and Destiny beginner box for part of our regular D&D group. We're all Star Wars fans, and I've listened to enough actual play podcasts and stuff before even trying to know how the game flows. It confirmed pretty much everything we figured we'd like about the system. It's Star Wars, the narrative dice are fun, etc.
The only concern for me is that there was no danger whatsoever. I'm hoping that it was just kid gloves due to being a beginner box and starting characters with lightsabers and all that right out of the box, but the combat was just too easy. Enemies barely dealt any damage(it felt odd that the stat blocks didn't let enemies add damage per success rolled the way players do, just made it a waste to succeed multiple times), and the player characters just annihilated all the enemies with ease.
I totally get that this game is not heavy on combat crunch and I'm fine with that. It's never going to be a mechanical combat game, and the GM is clearly going to have to base the stats of their enemies on how invested the party is into combat efficacy if they want to ever make combat feel scary. I just hope that it's actually possible.
One of my friends wants to GM a Star Wars campaign when my current D&D game ends, and if we're going to be playing this game for a long time, I really hope that the combat crunch I need is there, at least more than the beginner box would indicate. I mean, my plan is to play a Consular(Sage) whose biggest party asset is my ability to use knowledge checks to help out my allies, but still.
Combat can get pretty brutal. But it's star wars, so nameless mooks aren't a threat unless they are in huge numbers. It's the named bad guys with adversary dice and player scale talents that will kill you.
I can't say I've played the beginner box, but I can definitely tell you the combat is lethal
Stormtrooper minion groups are a challenge no matter what XP you are
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
The Force and Destiny beginner box is by far the easiest of the three Josh. I almost destroyed the Krayt Fang (the starship the players get in the Edge of the Empire one) at the end. It had only 2 hull left and that was basically with Tie Fighters. Likewise, Stormtroopers cannot be underestimated and a couple of minion Stormtroopers can mow through player wounds at an incredibly fast rate. Also note that the full critical injuries/wounds table isn't in the Beginner Boxes - which deliberately remove death as a possibility.
See, the minions in beginner box were just a joke. I thought having their attack be stronger the more of them there were left would be cool, but unfortunately it didn't hit hard enough to matter. Oh no, 5 damage, 3 or 4 of which got soaked up and then they're dead.
And the nemesis at the end of the beginner adventure was such a joke. I thought he'd be a cool challenge, but again, his damage wasn't high enough, and his wounds so low that 2 of the party members just smoked him in less than 2 rounds while the rest of the party just handled the mooks in the other room.
There were no adversary dice or player talents on that guy, and I don't even know what adversary dice are so maybe that helps.
I figure it's Star Wars, so I won't be playing it primarily for combat crunch anyway. It's just so much of the game is super awesome that the fact that the combat feels like it's going to be a weak point bums me out, but not that bad. Like I said, if we're playing Star Wars, it's for a fun Star Wars hero story, not for combat mechanics anyway.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Adversary dice automatically upgrade difficulty dice that players roll when making attacks or similar against them. So you have Adversary 3 and that means 3 purples get turned into red dice when you're attacking that enemy. From my current experience, once you have the full system it's not hard to make really compelling and challenging combats if you want. They do need a degree of engineering though.
I will reiterate that the beginner box for Force and Destiny is uniquely easier than the others - especially the final encounter. The battle against the Tie Fighters in Edge of the Empire had everyone on the edge of their seats it was so tense.
Stormtroopers have blaster rifles. 9 damage pre soak. A group of 4 troopers rolls attacks at 3 Yellows.
Nemeses and Rivals can join minion groups! By doing this they can basically use the minions to soak hits. It's insane
Adversary upgrades difficulty dice when players make combat checks against the NPC with adversary. So Adversary 2 changes 2 purples into reds, and if there are no purples it adds a red (add a purple, upgrade it)
EotE is the only boxed set I've played, and it definately had some toughies. It also had the wookiee, played by my wife the lifetime twi'lek, kool-aid manning through a wall to smash a guy.
Thanks everybody. I kind of felt like the lightsaber wielding pre-gens might've made the F&D beginner box feel a bit easier than it would've otherwise.
The adversary dice sound cool, I like that. I'm glad to hear that it's possible to make more challenging combats, even if the GM has to do a bit of work. I expected that would be the case, just because I feel like the game encourages builds that wildly differ in combat efficacy, so it's not as simple as a d20 combat game to say "this is a balanced encounter." After all, if your party has a maxxed out Ataru Striker and Assassin or whatever that's going to be really different than the party who has all their exp in piloting ships, fixing computers, and doing diplomacy.
So about minion groups, am I right in my reading that they still only attack once as a group? Like there's 3 wolves in this minion group, they attack once with say 2 yellow, one green and do damage. Then when one dies, their attack becomes 1 yellow, 2 green, etc. ? Or does each minion attack separately ala 13th Age? Because if it's separate, I was reading it wrong and that would make them much deadlier.
I definitely look forward to playing this full game, because I think it's a great system, and Star Wars is awesome.
It is the former. The thing that makes it deadly is you are not limited on size for your minion groups. Want your players to poop their pants? Say "you see about 20 Stormtroopers coming at you. Mechanically speaking this is four minion groups with five troopers apiece." Suddenly you have four threats rolling YYYG at them and they deal 9 damage.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited February 2016
No, they only attack once but their advantage is that they roll more dice and can soak hits. The numbers are mostly academic and are done to make a combat "feel" more full of enemies while keeping dice rolling (against PCs) down.
Minion groups are most useful when used to protect others - in an example space combat I am running 3 Ties protect an elite named nemesis Tie Interceptor. The Ties are not very relevant to the combat, but the fact they are a big buffer in HP for the elite character is their primary purpose in life. This makes it impossible for the players to just pick off the actual target they want to do so, which is the named Interceptor Pilot.
Edit: Also I used a "Named Nemesis" rule in my Star Wars game. My players can only be killed by named enemies, others just badly injure or capture them or whatever else I think is appropriate.
The only time my EotE group ran the boxed set they bypassed the Storm Troopers. Dropping the water tower on the bucket heads was enough of a distraction that they escaped that part without combat.
But yeah, a few good rolls with blaster rifles hurt.
Thanks, guys. I like the minion groups that way, and I could see 4 groups of 5 stormtroopers being quite scary, plus like you said those groups have higher damage so the party can't just soak it all up.
@Aegeri, is that "named nemesis" rule even necessary in this game? Isn't it particularly hard to even have a character die in the first place? Seems to me like you would have to have multiple crits already on you, then get hit with a vicious weapon by a guy who has multiple talents in brutal crit or whatever it's called to even have a chance to roll high enough on the crit table to die?
Honestly, lightsabers aren't that powerful compared to other melee options in the hands of a character built to use them. Until you get into special crystals and such, they're basically a way for low brawn characters to hang in melee. Even after the upgrades, they tend to be in par with melee weapons that also got the monster truck treatment.
I think the lightsabers shined in the beginner box because they ignore 10 soak so meant that every successful attack from a lightsaber = dead rival or minion pretty much.
the stat blocks didn't let enemies add damage per success rolled the way players do
Is that specifically called out? Because it's incorrect. More success = more damage. Also minion groups have a chance to crit, which is worse for players.
For the purposes of the beginner box, I was just using the stat blocks as written. The damage of the enemies was always listed as a flat value, no +1 per success rolled listed. On the character folios, it calls out the +1 per success rolled, so I assumed the enemy stat blocks would do the same if they were meant to do that. I figured it was an oversight and not intended, but yeah.
How much strain damage? I used strain damage pretty heavily I'd say. I used it at all the places the beginner adventure called for it, plus I improvised even more, especially for threats on checks and some different roleplay stuff. The players were rolling a lot of net advantage and using it to heal strain, so I don't know that I ever got any of them close to their strain threshold, but I was definitely using it.
I have another question I remembered about "per encounter" terminology. This terminology is used for "recover strain after encounters," as well as for limits on how many times you can use stuff like Force Heal and Medicine checks to heal wounds. Now my question is, do the books call out what should be considered an encounter? Is it combat? Is it any encounter? Is it just up to the GM like I assume? Because I wasn't letting the party recover strain after every single skill based encounter or roleplay encounter in the beginner module. It also didn't come up, but I wouldn't have let the consular with the force heal power go "i'm going to heal wounds on somebody during this 'encounter' while we buy a thing from this vendor" or whatever.
Honestly, lightsabers aren't that powerful compared to other melee options in the hands of a character built to use them. Until you get into special crystals and such, they're basically a way for low brawn characters to hang in melee. Even after the upgrades, they tend to be in par with melee weapons that also got the monster truck treatment.
I haven't played any F&D yet, so I haven't seen any lightsaber stuff, but I'm inclined to agree with you. By the time were done with our EotE campaign, our 5 Brawn 4 Melee Wookie with a vibroaxe was the deadliest thing I've ever seen. Whole squads of stormtroopers getting wrecked with one swing. It was pretty glorious.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Yes, enemies add their successes to damage just like PCs.
For the purposes of the beginner box, I was just using the stat blocks as written. The damage of the enemies was always listed as a flat value, no +1 per success rolled listed. On the character folios, it calls out the +1 per success rolled, so I assumed the enemy stat blocks would do the same if they were meant to do that. I figured it was an oversight and not intended, but yeah.
I mean it's a core part of the game, I'm not sure why it would need to be written on the stat block. Can you share a picture?
How much strain damage? I used strain damage pretty heavily I'd say. I used it at all the places the beginner adventure called for it, plus I improvised even more, especially for threats on checks and some different roleplay stuff. The players were rolling a lot of net advantage and using it to heal strain, so I don't know that I ever got any of them close to their strain threshold, but I was definitely using it.
Good, keep hitting them with Strain. Be sure to use Setback dice (or Boost for the bad guys) whenever appropriate, don't forget that you can inflict strain when the bad guys roll Advantage too. Did you use Fear checks? Not sure about the characters in the F&D BB, but if the characters aren't "hardened" to certain types of situations (firefights, Sith, general creepiness), it's worth rolling.
I have another question I remembered about "per encounter" terminology. This terminology is used for "recover strain after encounters," as well as for limits on how many times you can use stuff like Force Heal and Medicine checks to heal wounds. Now my question is, do the books call out what should be considered an encounter? Is it combat? Is it any encounter? Is it just up to the GM like I assume? Because I wasn't letting the party recover strain after every single skill based encounter or roleplay encounter in the beginner module. It also didn't come up, but I wouldn't have let the consular with the force heal power go "i'm going to heal wounds on somebody during this 'encounter' while we buy a thing from this vendor" or whatever.
Any time the characters could pause to catch their breath, once per time they'd need to. If you've got a real challenging barter session when you're buying a thing from a vendor? Sure, especially if there's a lot of back and forth or multiple participants. You'll generally see player characters drop from Strain loss before they drop from Wounds, feel free to pile it on.
Force Heal and Medicine are special, it's only like once per critical injury or day or something. You can't use it all the time. Stimpacks are similar, they get diminishing returns as you use them (5-4-3-2-1-done).
For the purposes of the beginner box, I was just using the stat blocks as written. The damage of the enemies was always listed as a flat value, no +1 per success rolled listed. On the character folios, it calls out the +1 per success rolled, so I assumed the enemy stat blocks would do the same if they were meant to do that. I figured it was an oversight and not intended, but yeah.
I mean it's a core part of the game, I'm not sure why it would need to be written on the stat block. Can you share a picture?
How much strain damage? I used strain damage pretty heavily I'd say. I used it at all the places the beginner adventure called for it, plus I improvised even more, especially for threats on checks and some different roleplay stuff. The players were rolling a lot of net advantage and using it to heal strain, so I don't know that I ever got any of them close to their strain threshold, but I was definitely using it.
Good, keep hitting them with Strain. Be sure to use Setback dice (or Boost for the bad guys) whenever appropriate, don't forget that you can inflict strain when the bad guys roll Advantage too. Did you use Fear checks? Not sure about the characters in the F&D BB, but if the characters aren't "hardened" to certain types of situations (firefights, Sith, general creepiness), it's worth rolling.
I have another question I remembered about "per encounter" terminology. This terminology is used for "recover strain after encounters," as well as for limits on how many times you can use stuff like Force Heal and Medicine checks to heal wounds. Now my question is, do the books call out what should be considered an encounter? Is it combat? Is it any encounter? Is it just up to the GM like I assume? Because I wasn't letting the party recover strain after every single skill based encounter or roleplay encounter in the beginner module. It also didn't come up, but I wouldn't have let the consular with the force heal power go "i'm going to heal wounds on somebody during this 'encounter' while we buy a thing from this vendor" or whatever.
Any time the characters could pause to catch their breath, once per time they'd need to. If you've got a real challenging barter session when you're buying a thing from a vendor? Sure, especially if there's a lot of back and forth or multiple participants. You'll generally see player characters drop from Strain loss before they drop from Wounds, feel free to pile it on.
Force Heal and Medicine are special, it's only like once per critical injury or day or something. You can't use it all the time. Stimpacks are similar, they get diminishing returns as you use them (5-4-3-2-1-done).
I don't have the beginner box materials to show you a picture, but it's as simple as the beginner box stat blocks not having the little addition that says "+1 per success rolled" after the damage. So it just says wolves, attack, bla bla, damage 5. I totally get if the stat blocks in the core books just assume that you know the rule to add +1 damage per success rolled, but I'd assume the beginner ones would've spelled it out, just like they do on the character folios for the entries for weapons. The beginner box is kind of a streamlined thing compared to the full game for sure, so it might've been a conscious decision by them, or they might've just forgotten to add the extra damage per success to the stat blocks for it.
I found the relevant piece in the F&D book about limitations on Force Heal. It says that using force heal counts as a use of a stimpack, so each single target can only benefit from five uses of heal over a 24 hour period, also counting against stimpack uses and vice versa.
I'm still unclear about medicine and medpacs. It sounds like for medpac, you can heal wounds once per encounter per target, but that still comes with a question about what should be considered an encounter. Then for healing critical wounds, you can only attempt to fix one once per week.
We're not new to RPGs, so I was definitely going above and beyond the beginner book in terms of using strain. It's clearly meant to be a fluid resource that players spend and the GM throws at you to represent all that mental and physical stress and what not.
I didn't use fear checks because I don't know what that is. It's not part of the beginner box adventure as far as I could tell.
At least for EotE and AoR the + to damage is listed in the big block titled Dealing Damage and Suffering Wounds. Probably the same in F&D.
"The damage inflicted by the attack is equal to the damage rating of the weapon plus the number of Success symbols left uncanceled."
Those sets just list the flat damage too, Blaster rifle 9.
I'd say it's easy enough to miss and if you missed it, it just made the first adventure a little easier. Nothing to be too worried about.
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I certainly have more character concepts for Star Wars characters than I've got games to play them in, but it's not to the point where I've got dozens of character sheets waiting for a moment to go, because when it comes to Star Wars I like to try and bring a concept to the table that works with the campaign being proposed and also works with what other players are bringing to the table.
With 4e, you can pretty much show up with anything and as long as the players know what they're doing, it can be made to work.
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See also: our three defender no leader party.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
At least, in combat.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Let me begin by saying that I know nothing about Dark Heresy, however, I know something about Boss fights and something that's not failed me yet is the three tier boss fight. You take your Boss's HP, cut it in thirds, and build three encounters that happen back to back to back. The first fight is straight-forward. The boss has is normal group of Minions, uses ok attacks but nothing really ass kicking. Once you get him down that first tier, switch it up. The Boss now knows the group is a real threat so he'll unleash new, more powerful attacks, a new batch of stronger minions arrive and/or something happens that sets of some environmental danger that everyone has to deal with or move to a new area, setting up tier two as a chase scene/battle. The last tier is when the Boss is desperate. He'll unleash powerful powers that damage even his own people, move more around the map, use the last tier's environmental danger as his own weapon, and near the end, maybe even try to escape. To steal from 4E terminology, stuff like auras that boost his minions when they are close to or engaged with the PC as him can be great passive powers that start tier two that add bonus danger to the fight.
Example: Party in a Fantasy setting have to take on a young dragon with some kolbold minions. Simple fight happens in the center of an old temple. Tier one, the dragon stays back, using Breath attacks while the kolbolds block the forward movement of the melee PCs. Tier two, the dragon sets a large rune on the ground on fire and suddenly the ground breaks apart into large chunks and starts floating. Now, to move from rock to rock is a Dex/Jumping test, while the dragon is flying around taking swaps at everyone during his fly-bys. The minions from last round or still there but don't move from their rocks unless it is needed. Tier Three the floating chunks crash into a massive tower with a flat top and the dragon attacks with fire breath, claws, and everything three rounds or so flies in the air and makes a carpet bomb run of breath attacks on everyone. The dragon might have a counter-attack so it can deal more damage each round. The fight is visually exciting and challenging as strategy has to change on the fly.
yup.
The only concern for me is that there was no danger whatsoever. I'm hoping that it was just kid gloves due to being a beginner box and starting characters with lightsabers and all that right out of the box, but the combat was just too easy. Enemies barely dealt any damage(it felt odd that the stat blocks didn't let enemies add damage per success rolled the way players do, just made it a waste to succeed multiple times), and the player characters just annihilated all the enemies with ease.
I totally get that this game is not heavy on combat crunch and I'm fine with that. It's never going to be a mechanical combat game, and the GM is clearly going to have to base the stats of their enemies on how invested the party is into combat efficacy if they want to ever make combat feel scary. I just hope that it's actually possible.
One of my friends wants to GM a Star Wars campaign when my current D&D game ends, and if we're going to be playing this game for a long time, I really hope that the combat crunch I need is there, at least more than the beginner box would indicate. I mean, my plan is to play a Consular(Sage) whose biggest party asset is my ability to use knowledge checks to help out my allies, but still.
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Stormtrooper minion groups are a challenge no matter what XP you are
And the nemesis at the end of the beginner adventure was such a joke. I thought he'd be a cool challenge, but again, his damage wasn't high enough, and his wounds so low that 2 of the party members just smoked him in less than 2 rounds while the rest of the party just handled the mooks in the other room.
There were no adversary dice or player talents on that guy, and I don't even know what adversary dice are so maybe that helps.
I figure it's Star Wars, so I won't be playing it primarily for combat crunch anyway. It's just so much of the game is super awesome that the fact that the combat feels like it's going to be a weak point bums me out, but not that bad. Like I said, if we're playing Star Wars, it's for a fun Star Wars hero story, not for combat mechanics anyway.
I will reiterate that the beginner box for Force and Destiny is uniquely easier than the others - especially the final encounter. The battle against the Tie Fighters in Edge of the Empire had everyone on the edge of their seats it was so tense.
Stormtroopers have blaster rifles. 9 damage pre soak. A group of 4 troopers rolls attacks at 3 Yellows.
Nemeses and Rivals can join minion groups! By doing this they can basically use the minions to soak hits. It's insane
Adversary upgrades difficulty dice when players make combat checks against the NPC with adversary. So Adversary 2 changes 2 purples into reds, and if there are no purples it adds a red (add a purple, upgrade it)
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
The adversary dice sound cool, I like that. I'm glad to hear that it's possible to make more challenging combats, even if the GM has to do a bit of work. I expected that would be the case, just because I feel like the game encourages builds that wildly differ in combat efficacy, so it's not as simple as a d20 combat game to say "this is a balanced encounter." After all, if your party has a maxxed out Ataru Striker and Assassin or whatever that's going to be really different than the party who has all their exp in piloting ships, fixing computers, and doing diplomacy.
So about minion groups, am I right in my reading that they still only attack once as a group? Like there's 3 wolves in this minion group, they attack once with say 2 yellow, one green and do damage. Then when one dies, their attack becomes 1 yellow, 2 green, etc. ? Or does each minion attack separately ala 13th Age? Because if it's separate, I was reading it wrong and that would make them much deadlier.
I definitely look forward to playing this full game, because I think it's a great system, and Star Wars is awesome.
Minion groups are most useful when used to protect others - in an example space combat I am running 3 Ties protect an elite named nemesis Tie Interceptor. The Ties are not very relevant to the combat, but the fact they are a big buffer in HP for the elite character is their primary purpose in life. This makes it impossible for the players to just pick off the actual target they want to do so, which is the named Interceptor Pilot.
Edit: Also I used a "Named Nemesis" rule in my Star Wars game. My players can only be killed by named enemies, others just badly injure or capture them or whatever else I think is appropriate.
But yeah, a few good rolls with blaster rifles hurt.
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@Aegeri, is that "named nemesis" rule even necessary in this game? Isn't it particularly hard to even have a character die in the first place? Seems to me like you would have to have multiple crits already on you, then get hit with a vicious weapon by a guy who has multiple talents in brutal crit or whatever it's called to even have a chance to roll high enough on the crit table to die?
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
How much Strain damage were you dealing?
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How much strain damage? I used strain damage pretty heavily I'd say. I used it at all the places the beginner adventure called for it, plus I improvised even more, especially for threats on checks and some different roleplay stuff. The players were rolling a lot of net advantage and using it to heal strain, so I don't know that I ever got any of them close to their strain threshold, but I was definitely using it.
I have another question I remembered about "per encounter" terminology. This terminology is used for "recover strain after encounters," as well as for limits on how many times you can use stuff like Force Heal and Medicine checks to heal wounds. Now my question is, do the books call out what should be considered an encounter? Is it combat? Is it any encounter? Is it just up to the GM like I assume? Because I wasn't letting the party recover strain after every single skill based encounter or roleplay encounter in the beginner module. It also didn't come up, but I wouldn't have let the consular with the force heal power go "i'm going to heal wounds on somebody during this 'encounter' while we buy a thing from this vendor" or whatever.
I haven't played any F&D yet, so I haven't seen any lightsaber stuff, but I'm inclined to agree with you. By the time were done with our EotE campaign, our 5 Brawn 4 Melee Wookie with a vibroaxe was the deadliest thing I've ever seen. Whole squads of stormtroopers getting wrecked with one swing. It was pretty glorious.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
They definately have to go fishing harder for offensive upgrades if they want them. Shii-Cho Knight vs Marauder is a good illustration of this.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Good, keep hitting them with Strain. Be sure to use Setback dice (or Boost for the bad guys) whenever appropriate, don't forget that you can inflict strain when the bad guys roll Advantage too. Did you use Fear checks? Not sure about the characters in the F&D BB, but if the characters aren't "hardened" to certain types of situations (firefights, Sith, general creepiness), it's worth rolling.
Any time the characters could pause to catch their breath, once per time they'd need to. If you've got a real challenging barter session when you're buying a thing from a vendor? Sure, especially if there's a lot of back and forth or multiple participants. You'll generally see player characters drop from Strain loss before they drop from Wounds, feel free to pile it on.
Force Heal and Medicine are special, it's only like once per critical injury or day or something. You can't use it all the time. Stimpacks are similar, they get diminishing returns as you use them (5-4-3-2-1-done).
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They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Or weapons that can inflict Stun damage (Brawl, maybe Melee) or weapons with a Stun item quality.
I don't have the beginner box materials to show you a picture, but it's as simple as the beginner box stat blocks not having the little addition that says "+1 per success rolled" after the damage. So it just says wolves, attack, bla bla, damage 5. I totally get if the stat blocks in the core books just assume that you know the rule to add +1 damage per success rolled, but I'd assume the beginner ones would've spelled it out, just like they do on the character folios for the entries for weapons. The beginner box is kind of a streamlined thing compared to the full game for sure, so it might've been a conscious decision by them, or they might've just forgotten to add the extra damage per success to the stat blocks for it.
I found the relevant piece in the F&D book about limitations on Force Heal. It says that using force heal counts as a use of a stimpack, so each single target can only benefit from five uses of heal over a 24 hour period, also counting against stimpack uses and vice versa.
I'm still unclear about medicine and medpacs. It sounds like for medpac, you can heal wounds once per encounter per target, but that still comes with a question about what should be considered an encounter. Then for healing critical wounds, you can only attempt to fix one once per week.
We're not new to RPGs, so I was definitely going above and beyond the beginner book in terms of using strain. It's clearly meant to be a fluid resource that players spend and the GM throws at you to represent all that mental and physical stress and what not.
I didn't use fear checks because I don't know what that is. It's not part of the beginner box adventure as far as I could tell.
"The damage inflicted by the attack is equal to the damage rating of the weapon plus the number of Success symbols left uncanceled."
Those sets just list the flat damage too, Blaster rifle 9.
I'd say it's easy enough to miss and if you missed it, it just made the first adventure a little easier. Nothing to be too worried about.
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Improved Reflect for the reflected attack is fine, whatever. But Reflect working that way is pointlessly Jedi-centric.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.