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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Patryn of Elvenshae" data-source="post: 3759650" data-attributes="member: 23094">I'll agree that, at the low-end, certain CLs don't work as cleanly as I'd like.  Saga also streamlined away the fractional CRs that D&D has, so the minium CL in Saga is 1.On the other hand, a well-placed grenade or autofire burst can really ruin multiple PCs' days.  And that's just 1 attack.The argument that you seem to be making is analagous to one in which a group of well-played 3E PCs can, at first level, get the drop on an ogre and kill it before it can retaliate - and that it therefore shouldn't be a CR 2 challenge.  Or that a horde of CR 1/4 kobolds, if caught grouped up, can be taken out by a single sleep spell.Yes, if the tactical situation is such that the PCs can always bring their area-effect attacks to bear on clumped up, fragile bad-guys, then they're golden.One of the big changes when GMing SWSE is that the PCs will have those AoE attacks more often than they did in the RCR.  That's neither bad nor good (or, rather, that depends on your point of view), but it is a susbtantial change.One of the real tricks to "mastering" nonheroic badguys that I've picked up in my work with the system so far is that they are *really* the ultimate in glass cannons.  They have decent skills, feats, and BAB for their threat level, but they have very low Defense and HP values.  Or, in other words, they're there to serve as one-hit kills to the PCs who can still pack a wallop.  Accordingly, you need to use them in certain ways if you don't want them to put up more of a fight, and the biggest part of that is keeping them spread out.** - Except, of course, for the couple you have clumped up exactly so that the Jedi and the Soldier can Force Slam / Autofire them and feel like badasses.  After all, slamming a bunch of stormies to ground hard enough to kill them is fun.The biggest issue that you report encountering seem to be tied almost inextricably to the range at which your encounters are occuring.  Your Jedi characters (more on them later!) have been routinely capable of nailing all 10 stormies in a single turn.  That means they are no more than 12 squares away.  Stormtroopers' blaster rifles have a range of up to 300 squares, and can shoot 60 without tremendous loss of accuracy (-2).  They should be taking advantage of this.What we have here is sometimes called a "degenerative strategy."  This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that your party is set up in a way that is different from the expected norm.  I first heard it applied to fleet-building games (Bab 5, perhaps?) where taking nothing but fighters was doable.  And the issue with that is that the rules assumed that you'd have a mix of capital ships and fighters, and taking nothing but fighters into combat broke it in interesting ways.The SW rules more or less assume that you'll have a group that looks a lot like the Millenium Falcon, because that's usually what most people end up playing.  You, on the other hand, have an [almost-]all-Jedi team, and, moreover, have an "All-Force-Power-All-Jedi Team."Just like in D&D, where you need to plan and execute encounters a little differently if you're running a party of all clerics (or no clerics!), you'll need to take this into account.  By no means should you custom tailor every single fight to shut down the PCs' abilities - that would suck.  Rather, take the fact that they are going to somewhat reliably knock down a bunch of stormtroopers if they're clustered into account.  Give them some juicy targets up front, but have the real goal of the encounter be the elimination of the E-Web nest some distance away (where careful maneuvering to prevent being caught in the open is important), or the snipers in the trees, or the Chariot-class LAV.</blockquote>

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