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Messages - Doctor Awkward

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The Senate / Re: Bantha Rush and Battering Attack feats
« on: February 24, 2024, 11:02:37 am »
Understood. Thank you for the reply.

I think in my game I will turn Bantha Rush into a Grappling feat that triggers on a successful melee attack and see how that goes.

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The Senate / Bantha Rush and Battering Attack feats
« on: February 23, 2024, 09:33:17 am »
I was perusing some NPCs and I wanted to get a clarification regarding these two feats.

Is there no opposed roll for this other than a melee attack? In other words, you simply make a successful melee attack, and the target is immediately moved one square in any direction and knocked prone?

That seems ridiculously good against any melee character as you can deny them tactical movement and the ability to make full attacks.

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The Senate / Re: Ask a simple question, get a simple answer
« on: December 10, 2023, 05:39:34 pm »
Another random question:

How much do vehicles weigh?

My players want to know if they can take a speeder with them in a space transport, and I had thought I would just allow such things to be taken up to the limit of the available cargo hold. But there don't appear to be listed weights for any vehicle?

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The Senate / Re: Ask a simple question, get a simple answer
« on: December 10, 2023, 02:34:02 pm »
Quote from: StevenO on December 10, 2023, 01:20:09 pm
Quote from: Doctor Awkward on December 10, 2023, 12:21:04 pm
...

Is there a specific way in the rules to make a vehicle weapon Autofire-capable other than one of the three listed upgrades above?


I'd consider the Autoblaster upgrade could (should?) apply to weapon systems beyond just blasters.  It doesn't take any additional EP do add it but then again all it does is add the Autofire ability while doubling the cost.  For triple the cost you can get the double/twin cannon upgrades that don't take anymore EP but give +1D damage and which I have no issue refluffing.  For the same x2 cost but needing another EP you've also got the firelinked (2) which also boost damage a bit but again which I take little issue with refluffing if needed.

That sounds reasonable to me. Cheers!

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The Senate / Re: Advice on another starship encounter
« on: December 10, 2023, 02:22:10 pm »
Quote from: StevenO on December 10, 2023, 01:27:52 pm
When I count three squares diagonally I go 1, (2-3), 4 squares and the next square would be (5-6). 

Now I think counting diagonals all as 1 is far to generous (oh look, there's someone directly between me and a point that is as far away as I could reach this turn.  I guess I'll just move diagonally all the way so I'm no where near that blocker on the shortest path especially as this new path somehow isn't any shorter.  If this were a circle the shortest line from one side to the opposite is 2r but following around the circle the true distance 2(pi)r while counting diagonals a 1 kind of make it the same length.  The sad thing is that counting all diagonals as 2 is even worse!

I see what you mean with regards to absolute distance and accuracy, but I think for our group it would just be easier to either follow the rules as written and have all diagonals be 2, or the way we've been doing it to have all squares be 1.

I could see the alternating rule cause a lot of double-checking distances and counts for accuracy unnecessarily bogging down a turn.

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The Senate / Re: Ask a simple question, get a simple answer
« on: December 10, 2023, 12:21:04 pm »
With regards to starship and vehicle weapons, SotG indicates that if you add the double, quad, or fire-linked upgrades they become capable of Autofire if they weren't already. There are some vehicles (such as the 74-Z Speeder Bike in Core) that list vehicle weapons as being capable of Autofire in their statistics block but they don't make mention of one of these upgrades.

Is there a specific way in the rules to make a vehicle weapon Autofire-capable other than one of the three listed upgrades above?

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The Senate / Re: Advice on another starship encounter
« on: December 10, 2023, 12:10:27 pm »
Quote from: StevenO on December 09, 2023, 12:27:23 pm
Although I've come to prefer square grids counting diagonals at 1-2-1-2 (maybe with a "correction" after 7 squares) throwing this onto a hex grid might help visualize some of the positioning I've mentioned.  I will admit that what I don't like so much about a hex grid is that the "circle" around a starting point is still just a hex no matter how far you go.  That is also true for a square grid if/when you count diagonals as always 1 or always 2 but using 1.5 (really should be 1.4ish but that makes the math harder) you get something that kind of resembles a circle.

We've actually been ignoring the diagonal movement rule and just counting each squared moved through as 1, and 2 if it's difficult terrain.
Although that may be something to revisit just for space combat in order to artificially "increase" the size of the maps we use.

How does that work for counting distances that you can shoot?

For example, 3 diagonal squares is 6 squares of movement, does that mean that if you are 3 diagonal spaces away you are at long range for laser cannons?

EDIT: I may have found the answer: in the Core book on page 158 under Diagonal Movement, it states, "Moving Diagonally costs double. When Moving or counting along a diagonal path, each diagonal step counts as 2 squares."
That seems to suggest that when you are counting squares distances for ranged attacks diagonal squares are treated as 2, so 3 diagonal spaces would in fact be long range for Laser Cannons in space.

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The Senate / Re: Advice on another starship encounter
« on: December 08, 2023, 06:33:14 pm »
Quote from: StevenO on December 08, 2023, 03:40:51 pm
My thought for a map setup (and it'd need to be pretty big map would see the PCs starting in a more dense asteroid field near the bottom (short side) center of the map (possibly with TIEs near by) with the exit/hyperspace jump point in one of the far corners of the map and then the cruiser coming in somewhere toward the middle of the opposite (long) side.  Effectively setting up a triangle of some sort with the PCs, jump point, and cruiser at the corners.  The cruiser would want to cutoff/capture the PCs while the PCs want to get by it and to the jump point.  You could (should!) scatter a little bit of additional terrain on the map.  You do have various options for hazards and "terrain" to use.

I think I understand, and after glancing at the other map you posted I see the advantage of making the corvette something they have to get past rather than strictly run from.

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In so many ways this is what drive me bonkers about the setup for space combat.  You worry about the PCs spotting hiding TIE Fighters (but you were going to have the bait ship send out a message when detected; this would cover the TIEs as well) but somehow a "massive" cruiser is going to suddenly appear well inside of turbolaser range but just outside of laser range?  I doubt the astrogation data would be that good unless you're basically dropping the cruiser right on the jump point and the PCs are that close (which I might say is what happens in Rogue One in addition to Vader's ship likely getting some very good information for coming in.)  There should be some maneuvering going on although I fully realize that may not be the most exciting thing for many of the PCs.

When it comes to Starship Scale and AoO you should look at initiating dogfight which I believe is the only effective AoO chance at scale.  If the PCs ship has Combat Thrusters the upside is they are harder to hit with capital ship weapons but the downside, and it can be pretty big, is that they can now be tied up in a dogfight and thus unable to move!  I don't know just how good your Pilot is (and don't forget the ship's effects) but even the basic TIE fighter is no slouch there and could tie up the PC's ship.  Gunners still may be able to attack (often at a penalty unless the pilot is good enough) but this could slow/stop the PCs.

The pilot is pretty specialized. He has skill focus Pilot, Vehicular Combat, Starship Maneuvers I and is in the Master Privateer prestige class. It won't be easy for him to get caught up in a dogfight unless he wants to be.
Also, appearing in turbolaser range and out of laser range/tractor beam range is kind of the point, since the goal is for them to turn and run, not to try and fight it. I'm not worried about them getting annihilated by turbolasers on account of Vehicular Combat. Even if the corvette gunner rolled a Nat 20, the pilot autosucceeds on the check to avoid the attack.

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I though you were having the bait ship register when detected and send out a message that would then alert the others.  The size mod for a colossal ship is -10 and I doubt it's doing anything to hide while the Huge TIE is only -2 and would be trying to hit which it shouldn't be too bad at doing; I'm expecting the TIEs to have at least a 10 point advantage over the bait ship.  Besides all of that just when do you expect your players to break and run anyway?  Sure you could have them meet with an empty ship then bolt but the overall situation isn't much different.

I guess I do wonder just when a group would start working out the "escape jump" once they enter a system.  You may also ask just how many safe departure points/areas are there?  Now just what the distance between things is can be a challenge but if you want a ship to run.

I know that one of the PbP games I did here kind of involved something similar and I'll say I was very dissatisfied with how it when.  I believe this takes you to the initial setup:  http://thesagacontinues.createaforum.com/gameplay-area/prime-helix-1427/msg30484/#msg30484
The party was in that Corvette and were supposed to somehow "intercept" the Slave I and Hound's Tooth before they reached the planet.  If those two ships had actually made any effort at all to reach the planet there would be no way it hell we'd catch them especially if/when you count all diagonals as 2 squares.  We start 21 squares away from them and they start 17 squares away from the planet which is then about 38 squares away from us.  It just felt wrong.

While we didn't actually get to play it out the escape map:  http://thesagacontinues.createaforum.com/gameplay-area/prime-helix-1427/msg31669/#msg31669 is a bit more of what I had in mind.  Here "not seeing the enemy" until they're almost on top of us kind of worked assuming interference with the atmosphere and what not.  Even so it really had a problem in that we could easily put the hostile fighters behind us and out of range quickly when if they'd started somewhere "in front" of us we'd need to either maneuver to avoid them (taking longer in the process) or go through them.

Stock TIE Fighters are at +6 Skilled Crew +4 Dex -10 Huge Size for a total of +0 to Stealth checks, and one of the technician characters is rolling at a +19 after SF use computers. Even if they are 20 squares out when they do the Use Sensors check, unless the TIE rolls better than a 10 on their stealth check the tech doesn't even have to roll to notice them.
Plus, I feel like springing TIE fighters up in the belt would discourage that as an avenue of escape, making it seem like need to take a 3rd option away from both sets of enemies. I'd much rather present the encounter with all the forces arrayed in front of them so they feel like all their choices are in the direction of away.

So long as the party doesn't try to stay and fight I'm reasonably confident they have all the tools they need to get away.
I am going to adjust the layout of the map for sure though to make it the cruiser movement an interception rather than a straight chase. Thank you so much for all the help.

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The Senate / Re: Advice on another starship encounter
« on: December 08, 2023, 10:05:32 am »
Thank you for the reply.
There is some additional relevant information that I forgot to include earlier:

This is a Dark Times campaign, set about three years after Order 66 and the end of the Clone Wars, and the crew are all veterans of the war. The players all know in character who the two Jedi are, but they are all traveling undercover and I am trying to keep situations where the Jedi would be in a combat that revealing their nature would prove disastrous to a minimum for now, as I am setting up the introduction of the Inquisitorius for later in the campaign.
I do kind of dig the idea of a character-scale ambush on the derelict, but I'd rather keep this to just a starship encounter if I can.

I had planned to set things up with a 2D map in mind. My initial plan was to have the encounter on a large playmat, with the corvette on one side, the asteroid field on the other and player's ship somewhere in the middle. Rather than use the Asteroid Field Hazard, I was going to treat the field as a Starship Hazard, requiring a pilot check to avoid damage and treating the space as difficult terrain to move through, but while you are in the space it provides cover from attacks. Doing the field like this would make it possible for the Corvette to follow them, and let the party have the option of lessening the risk of Area Attacks from batteries.

The corvette would arrive at the system about 12 squares away from the players and deploy fighters if the party does not surrender immediately. The TIE's speed of 5 means that a check to Increase Speed would allow them to double move and be adjacent to the party if they beat the pilot in initiative.
That does raise another question: do vehicles threaten squares in starship scale encounters? Are there attacks of opportunity from movement in space?

I also like the idea of having the field be a ring field that surrounds a planet rather than an asteroid belt of arbitrary location in the system. That's a lot more scenic for one and being in a gravity well provides impetus to get some distance instead of just being able to immediately jump to Hyperspace and sets a definitive time frame for the chase, as it takes roughly a minute to get enough distance from a planet's orbit to make a jump. So combat would be a max of 10 rounds or until they reach a specified point.

Having the TIE fighters already hiding in the field is a good idea I hadn't considered. But I am concerned that the technicians would easily spot them at range before the NPC's detect their approach. My players will almost certainly suspect an ambush just from the outset.

The way I envisioned a tractor beam battery working is that only one of the three can actually have a hold of the ship at a time and the other two are just assisting and providing Aid Another bonuses to the attack roll (and maybe the grapple check). Destroying one of the beam projectors would break any existing hold and require another attack roll from the remaining emplacements to reestablish it.

If I am understanding what you mean by intercept correctly, the setup would be that the party has arrival coordinates for their jump to the system, and they'll have to locate the ship with a sensor scan when they arrive. They likewise have coordinates set for a jump out of the system but these coordinates are only valid from a specific point that I can arbitrarily set to be equal distance from where the party starts the encounter on the map and where the cruiser is, 12 squares from the party. The fighters would chase the ship directly and the cruiser would move laterally to their jump out point to intercept them.
The party can definitely outrun the corvette in the open (minus the threat of tractor beams) so they have the choice of racing the corvette to the pre-programmed jump point, or they could choose to run to a different spot anywhere else, but that would necessitate an Astrogation check, in combat, with all the usual penalties; the system is remote and not well-traveled, and due to a side trip they had to make this astrogation data is at least a week old, putting the base DC at 20, with a -10 for doing the check as a full-round action.

Does that sound right? Is there anything else I overlooked?

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The Senate / Re: Smuggling and inspections
« on: December 06, 2023, 01:42:19 pm »
Circumstantial modifiers are my go-to for situations like this. Say the inspection team is utilizing sensor sweeps and EM scanners to give them Equipment bonuses to their checks, which makes it much more likely they will succeed in their check.

Allow the players to come up with whatever methods they wish to harry or distract the inspection team without getting caught. Have a tech-focused character intentionally run a piece of jamming equipment to interfere with the sensors (Use Computers), allow any diplomats to strike up a conversation with them, charming their way through (Persuasion), some fast talk to bluff their way through (Deception) or just have a big guy standing there mean-mugging them the whole time as a distraction (Persuasion but using Strength instead of Charisma).

Set a fixed DC or make it contested against the NPC's and for each party member that succeeds they impose a -2 circumstance penalty on the result of the Perception check. If they fail by a significant amount they may provide a circumstance bonus instead, the inspector's annoyance reflected in a renewed effort to find something to pin on the crew.

This also allows the players to be directly involved in the scene in a mechanical way instead of passively waiting for you to tell them the results.

Alternatively, using the above framework to run the inspection as a skill challenge would present a much more concrete way of doing all of this within the printed rules.

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The Senate / Advice on another starship encounter
« on: December 06, 2023, 01:28:12 pm »
The general advice that I sought on buzz droids ended up working out pretty good so I wanted to make another request:

I am planning another space encounter and I currently have it set up as follows:
The party are on board their ship headed to an uninhabited system to rendezvous with another freighter in the asteroid belt of one of the planets. A commander of an Imperial task force has captured the freighter that the party is to meet and set a trap for them by leaving the derelict ship floating in the belt on minimal power. The ship is programmed to, upon being scanned, "call home" and signal the cruiser to jump to the system, at which point the commander will announce herself and demand the party surrender. Should they refuse, the commander will immediately begin hostilities with the goal of capturing the ship intact and the party alive.

The ideal scenario for me would be for the party to evade the enemy long enough to successfully flee the encounter and I am attempting to structure it accordingly.

The party is six players at level 9. The pilot has several starship maneuvers including Attack Formation Zeta Nine, Snap Roll, and Skim the Surface. There is a ranged soldier build as the gunner, two players with high skill ratings in Mechanics and computers, and two Force-sensitives, one that serves as the co-pilot and the other as another gunner. They are piloting a YT-2400 with Combat Thrusters, Mk4 Sublight drive, and 3 laser cannon emplacements.

For the opposition I am planning on adapting the Raider-class Corvette (on the saga edition wiki) to serve as a Vigil-class corvette: using the base defenses and HP for the Tartan-Class Patrol cruiser, removing the point defense batteries, and swapping the concussion missile launcher for a Tractor Beam battery with 3 Gunners. It will be carrying one TIE interceptor piloted by an Ace Pilot NPC (that I am tailor-making) and 3 additional TIE fighters.

My initial thought was to start the encounter with the party already caught in the tractor beam, which would require the gunners to shoot and disable it or the technicians to otherwise figure out a way to neutralize it while the pilot does his best to avoid the opposition. But there don't appear to be any mechanics that well support this course of action. Under the Attack an Object rules, if I were to treat a tractor beam battery as a Gargantuan object, it would have 20 HP, DR 55, and a Reflex Defense of 8 (10 - 5 Gargantuan + 3 Reflex defense of ship (minus armor)). If my math is right the party would deal enough damage to disable it easily within the first round, and likely within the first shot. If they are remarkably unlucky it might take two rounds.
Which is alright, I suppose, since the goal is just to present the threat of what they are facing.
But it doesn't feel very cinematic.

The other option I thought would work is to start the encounter positioning the corvette on the opposite side of the party from the asteroid belt, which would suggest the option is to fly through the belt to escape, using the asteroids as cover from the tractor beam. The goal then is to avoid the fighters long enough to leave the belt with enough distance from the corvette to jump out before they can lock on. This would set up a nice cinematic chase with plenty of obstacles and hazards for the pilot and TIE fighters for the gunners. And I could have the attack object rules in the back pocket if everything goes wrong.
My concern with this approach is it would probably take the corvette out of the fight almost entirely and might leave the two technicians with very little to do.

What are everyone's thoughts? Is there anything I've overlooked that would better serve the scenario?

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The Senate / Re: Buzz droids vs. Eta-2 Actis Interceptor
« on: February 26, 2023, 10:47:25 pm »
Quote from: Mobiuszero on February 12, 2023, 04:43:52 pm
Don’t use the Buzz Droids to attack the party’s reflex. Like regular attacks. Instead go after their hull plating, cooling systems, repulsers, or their Canopy. A Canopy has a ref of 10 DR 2 and about 20 hit points. Turn one, the canopy starts to crack. That should give the party something more to think about. Next target their gun turrets, treat as medium objects, or go after their Astro droid. R4 was a base model in the movie lucky if it had ten hp. Depending on they type of ship(s) for your encounter, you can have them go for control surfaces, or use the ship systems chart from SaV. Since the droids can’t be shaken off a moving vehicle, the heroes won’t  have Dex nor would they have the option of Vehicular Combat.

Buzz Droids aren’t meant for completely destroying an enemy fighter. They are however, designed to weaken, distract, or disable it. Best case to use your little pests to force your heroes down the condition track or do things like reduce movement speed, or force weapons to misfire by giving them a steep penalty, or trashing their shields.  Have them try and intentionally crash their ship.

The goal would be to have the heroes focus on more than the dogfight at hand.

I like this a lot better than just attacking a ship.
Where did the cockpit stats come from? And which page of Scum and Villainy are you referencing here?

Would it be reasonable to swap the Buzz droids trained skill to mechanics to better facilitate sabotage instead of attacking? With their +6 they wouldn't hardly ever make the DC 25.

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The Senate / Buzz droids vs. Eta-2 Actis Interceptor
« on: January 28, 2023, 01:26:21 am »
I am attempting to design a starship encounter for the party involving Vulture Droids with Discord Missiles and I was wondering how the Buzz droids are supposed to... work, I suppose would be the question?

At +8 to hit it would seem they would hit that ship less than 50% of the time, and with it's DR 10 (reduced to 5 with Penetrating Attack), when they do it it would be less than a 75% chance of doing more than 5 points of damage.

That's like... 35 combat rounds for three of these droids to eventually peel open this starfighter. And for anything slightly larger (like a typical party space transport) they're basically no threat at all.

Is there something I'm missing with these guys? Has anyone utilized them effectively in their games?

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