Instakill Mechanics in TTRPGs

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

The solution to having very obviously lethal weapons like blasters/lightsabers while not having every PC get instakilled all the time is to reframe combat - lots more Near Misses and lots less "take X damage". Narratively - the only attack which actually connects is the killing/incapacitating blow.

Example: In Fate, when an incoming successful attack comes in, you can avoid it by taking Stress instead. Once your stress is maximized, then you start taking consequences - actual, debilitating wounds. Once your consequences are full, damage kills you. Stress is not hit points, marking stress doesn't mean you got shot. It's exactly what it sounds like - mental/physical strain from the stress of conflict. Stress doesn't measure how tough, burly, or durable you are. It respresents how long you can stay in a fight before that one serious hit lands on you.

A stormtrooper might have 2 stress and no consequences - a blaster bolt with a decent roll will just kill them. Roll really poorly? Your shot hit cover/flew wide, causing stress but no physical harm. A PC or major antagonist might have lots of stress and consequence slots - lots of space to resolve attacks as near misses or minor wounds before a serious hit sticks. A fight with between a jedi master and sith lord with lots of stress boxes will result in lots of blade clashes and dodges as stress gets whittled away, even though a single successful lightsaber strike will kill the loser instantly.

 

[zarionofarabel]

The problem with this is the lack of hit points in Star Wars D6. If I implement a world where blaster bolts from basically any weapon are actually killing Stormtroopers on a single hit, then the overlap between armored stormtrooper's soak and a PC's soak is pretty strong. In the lore we don't see a lot of protagonists wearing armor, which is fine, we can explain via system mechanics why you might want to avoid heavy armor. But it then creates a world where if blaster bolts are one shotting armored stormtroopers they are very likely to be one shotting PCs as well.

So a solution to this is reframe what you think you are seeing on the screen. You see storm troopers hit by blaster bolts and go down, and it is implied that they died, but not actually said on the screen. We see no injuries usually. Just scorch marks on the armor. So what if the injuries are sub-lethal? In fact, there is a scene in "A New Hope" that seems to (perhaps by accident) validate this interpretation. During the scene where the Falcon is blasting off from Mos Eisley, several Stormtroopers go down, but then in the next shot as the Falcon blasts off, we see several of those downed troopers have stood up and are continuing fire. We could interpret this as a continuity error in the film making, or we could interpret this as stunned or injured soldiers getting back in the fight. After all, we rarely spend a lot of time with any particular stormtrooper. They are only on screen usually for a few seconds. Who is to say that after the heroes run off, half of the "dead" stormtroopers don't get back up, shaken and wounded, but not dead, calling for a medic or getting back into the fight.

That's the interpretation in use in my RPG, because otherwise, if a blaster rifle hitting a stormtrooper is invariably lethal it's going to be lethal pretty darn often to anything less than an armored Wookie.

And worse, if you don't use this interpretation, then you have villain decay and villain decay is lethal to a setting. If you have a "Cobra Commander" problem where the villains are always weak and self-destructing, it becomes impossible to convey any sense of danger and drama. Disney's "sequel" movies and later episodes of The Mandalorian had this problem at a severe level. Whereas something like Andor maintains an RPG like sense of scale, where Stormtroopers and Tie Fighters can be believably lethal and the Empire is shown competent enough that they feel like dangerous antagonists and we have to worry for the protagonists. The failings of the villains are believable enough and human enough that they don't feel exaggerated to "let" the heroes win. I'm not saying Andor's handling of everything is perfect. There are budget limitations that I think sometimes get in the way of presenting the scale of the threat, or the horrors of what is going on, but overall they do a good job.

The other thing to keep in mind is that at the time my campaign is set (now 14 BBY), the rebellion doesn't really exist outside of some disloyal politicians privately talking, some Separatist holdouts, and a few isolated cells like Saw's Partisans, the Ghorman Front, the Justice Action Network, etc. The PCs - Imperial Peacekeepers or "Bounty Hunters" - have been in more firefights where Stormtroopers or Imperial Troopers were allies than they have been in firefights where the Stormtroopers were the opposing side. Stormtroopers are often named NPCs more often than they are mooks. That's probably going to shift over time, as the PC's don't necessarily like the empire and take more illegal jobs from "rebel" groups, but right now Stormtroopers being one shotted just means they'd be both useless allies and useless enemies.

Like I said, different strokes for different folks.

If I'm playing a Star Wars TTRPG and Stormtroopers don't go down after a single blaster hit then the game is not emulating the parent media and I am not going to be happy with the experience, simple as that. What that really means is that Stormtrooper armor is for show, and they are as fragile as any unarmored person.

How may characters in Star Wars get shot with a blaster multiple times and survive? The tall lankey droid voiced by Alan Tudyk? Some of the Mandalorians because they have their special armor? I guess Mando armor is the only real armor.

Like I said, if the mechanics of a game don't emulate the parent media, then I won't be that happy with the experience at the table. That's why if I am playing a Star Wars TTRPG Stormtroopers need to die after a single hit because that's what consistently happens on screen. There are lots of ways to make villains dangerous and scary other than them being resistant to damage.

Heck, that was the reason why I disliked D&D basically from the get go and abandoned it as soon as I discovered non-D&D TTRPGs. D&D does a poor job of emulating D&D novels, like a really really bad job! If the mechanics of a game don't produce results that emulate the media they are based on, I am not going to be happy with the experience, simple as that.

Stormtroopers die after taking a single blaster hit. I've seen it happen a hundred times!

 

[zarionofarabel]

The solution to having very obviously lethal weapons like blasters/lightsabers while not having every PC get instakilled all the time is to reframe combat - lots more Near Misses and lots less "take X damage". Narratively - the only attack which actually connects is the killing/incapacitating blow.

Example: In Fate, when an incoming successful attack comes in, you can avoid it by taking Stress instead. Once your stress is maximized, then you start taking consequences - actual, debilitating wounds. Once your consequences are full, damage kills you. Stress is not hit points, marking stress doesn't mean you got shot. It's exactly what it sounds like - mental/physical strain from the stress of conflict. Stress doesn't measure how tough, burly, or durable you are. It respresents how long you can stay in a fight before that one serious hit lands on you.

A stormtrooper might have 2 stress and no consequences - a blaster bolt with a decent roll will just kill them. Roll really poorly? Your shot hit cover/flew wide, causing stress but no physical harm. A PC or major antagonist might have lots of stress and consequence slots - lots of space to resolve attacks as near misses or minor wounds before a serious hit sticks. A fight with between a jedi master and sith lord with lots of stress boxes will result in lots of blade clashes and dodges as stress gets whittled away, even though a single successful lightsaber strike will kill the loser instantly.

There's lots of ways to do it. In a game where HP attrition is the default for "heroic" characters, one can always institute minion rules so Stormtroopers would only have a single HP, so a single hit will always result in the Stormtrooper dead in one shot.

 

[jian]

The problem with this is the lack of hit points in Star Wars D6. If I implement a world where blaster bolts from basically any weapon are actually killing Stormtroopers on a single hit, then the overlap between armored stormtrooper's soak and a PC's soak is pretty strong. In the lore we don't see a lot of protagonists wearing armor, which is fine, we can explain via system mechanics why you might want to avoid heavy armor. But it then creates a world where if blaster bolts are one shotting armored stormtroopers they are very likely to be one shotting PCs as well.

So a solution to this is reframe what you think you are seeing on the screen. You see storm troopers hit by blaster bolts and go down, and it is implied that they died, but not actually said on the screen. We see no injuries usually. Just scorch marks on the armor. So what if the injuries are sub-lethal? In fact, there is a scene in "A New Hope" that seems to (perhaps by accident) validate this interpretation. During the scene where the Falcon is blasting off from Mos Eisley, several Stormtroopers go down, but then in the next shot as the Falcon blasts off, we see several of those downed troopers have stood up and are continuing fire. We could interpret this as a continuity error in the film making, or we could interpret this as stunned or injured soldiers getting back in the fight. After all, we rarely spend a lot of time with any particular stormtrooper. They are only on screen usually for a few seconds. Who is to say that after the heroes run off, half of the "dead" stormtroopers don't get back up, shaken and wounded, but not dead, calling for a medic or getting back into the fight.

That's the interpretation in use in my RPG, because otherwise, if a blaster rifle hitting a stormtrooper is invariably lethal it's going to be lethal pretty darn often to anything less than an armored Wookie.

And worse, if you don't use this interpretation, then you have villain decay and villain decay is lethal to a setting. If you have a "Cobra Commander" problem where the villains are always weak and self-destructing, it becomes impossible to convey any sense of danger and drama. Disney's "sequel" movies and later episodes of The Mandalorian had this problem at a severe level. Whereas something like Andor maintains an RPG like sense of scale, where Stormtroopers and Tie Fighters can be believably lethal and the Empire is shown competent enough that they feel like dangerous antagonists and we have to worry for the protagonists. The failings of the villains are believable enough and human enough that they don't feel exaggerated to "let" the heroes win. I'm not saying Andor's handling of everything is perfect. There are budget limitations that I think sometimes get in the way of presenting the scale of the threat, or the horrors of what is going on, but overall they do a good job.

The other thing to keep in mind is that at the time my campaign is set (now 14 BBY), the rebellion doesn't really exist outside of some disloyal politicians privately talking, some Separatist holdouts, and a few isolated cells like Saw's Partisans, the Ghorman Front, the Justice Action Network, etc. The PCs - Imperial Peacekeepers or "Bounty Hunters" - have been in more firefights where Stormtroopers or Imperial Troopers were allies than they have been in firefights where the Stormtroopers were the opposing side. Stormtroopers are often named NPCs more often than they are mooks. That's probably going to shift over time, as the PC's don't necessarily like the empire and take more illegal jobs from "rebel" groups, but right now Stormtroopers being one shotted just means they'd be both useless allies and useless enemies.

So, assuming we're using the WEG D6 system (which I guess we are) and as a Star Wars D6 GM with decades under my belt, I'd say the following:

1) What do your players want? Do they want to play in a gritty, realistic version of GFFA where they have to fight uphill and really should avoid any fights at all (like Andor) or do they want to play cinematic heroes of their own trilogy, with the same likelihood of success like Luke, Leia, or Han (or Rey, Finn, or Poe, or Anakin, Padme, or Obi-Wan)? I generally pitch and run the latter. Plenty of GMs prefer the former and have done so since the game came out.

2) Assuming the latter in 1), above, do you want the world of GFFA to feel like the films? In the films, stormtroopers are scary but they go down like ninepins; collectively, however, they pose enough of a narrative threat that the heroes run away if dozens of them turn up.

3) Assuming 2), above, then I tend to use the following mods for stormtrooper stats from the various RPG books:

• Pretty Armour Does Nothing (no bonus to soak from the armour)
• Stats are Pretty Average, Actually (2D across the board)
• Basic Training is Basic (skills +1D at most)
• One Hit and I'm Out (any damage that exceeds soak takes one out; it makes for easy bookkeeping)

With the above modifications, and with the players wielding weapons doing 4D-5D damage, stormtroopers go down every time a PC hits one. A bunch of mooks with 3D in Blasters are still a threat, however, because it's possible that one of them will hit and 5D damage from a blaster rifle is no joke, so PCs will generally run from dozens of stormtroopers.

This doesn't lead to villain decay, because everyone knows that stormtroopers are essentially endless in number even if they're pretty crap individually, and because the real threats are the boss-level characters such as Inquisitors or even Storm Commandos who occasionally accompany them. None of the above mods apply to bosses, of course.

And of course, if you don't want that sort of game and nor do your players, and your answer to question 1) was the former, then none of the above applies. Stormtroopers are the elite jackbooted thugs of a fascist regime, and when they come for you the excrement has really hit the fan. Get out of the window and run away across the rooftops, don't shoot at them for Force's sake. The Rebellion needs you alive, not a martyr.

 

[Celebrim]

Stormtroopers die after taking a single blaster hit. I've seen it happen a hundred times!

I mean, you probably haven't, unless you define blaster cannons, heavy repeating blasters and other vehicle and crew served weapons as single blaster hits. The ones you have seen are almost always taken down by named PC's in gaming terms (who have enough blaster skill to make called shots under my D6 house rules and one shot targets). You may have seen a couple of dozen, and no more than a dozen shot and killed by mooks (3 or 4 in the opening of A New Hope where the Stormtroopers decidedly kick the crap out of Rebel naval troopers, like 8 during the chaos of the Ghorman Massacre in Andor, a few others). So some of what you are talking about is subjective, and some of what you are talking about is just you taking conventions of movie making as being The One True Narrative.

I bet you hate Star Wars video games as well, because while you may mow through hundreds of Stormtroopers over the course of one, they rarely go down to a single hit (especially as you start running into more elite grades of them) and often they don't go down to a single lightsaber hit(!). That's because what is good for the video games gameplay may not be what is good for the film makers desire for pacing and quick run time, to say nothing of meeting a PG rating. Stormtroopers dropping bloodlessly to the ground in cartoon deaths is part of a long-time convention in movies that make them more "family friendly" than enemies rolling on the ground in pain and displaying their humanity. It's why the main foes in the prequel movies are robots, because it lets jedi go around hacking enemies apart and still get that PG rating.

So I'm not going to let a movie define what the "One True Narrative" is about an RPG setting. Rather, like the video game maker I'm going to ask what makes for the most compelling narrative and gameplay and emersion and coherency in the setting, and if this means departing from the film in minor ways or reinterpreting what we see from the screen (such as assuming that the battle of Yavin takes place 2-3 weeks after the Millenium Falcon flees the Death Star with Leia and the plans, which doesn't contradict the movie but isn't an assumption you'd necessarily make based on the movie alone) then I'm happy to do it. I've even explained to the players that any plot holes or problems in the movies comes from the fact that they are in universe holovid dramas, that they are the Hollywood version of the story that plays fast and loose with the events in order to meet a runtime and simplify the narrative and make it conform more readily to a conventional plot.

Books, video games, movies, even cartoons all inform for me what the setting is, and the setting is constructed according to the needs of an RPG. If the villains are making their soldiers wear armor that is only a hinderance to them, and you are DMing that setting, then I'm going to thank you for the game and walk away at the end of the session and not come back - and that's "strokes for different folks".

I don't agree with you about D&D. So we are probably miles apart on this.

 

[Celebrim]

1) What do your players want? Do they want to play in a gritty, realistic version of GFFA where they have to fight uphill and really should avoid any fights at all (like Andor) or do they want to play cinematic heroes of their own trilogy, with the same likelihood of success like Luke, Leia, or Han (or Rey, Finn, or Poe, or Anakin, Padme, or Obi-Wan)? I generally pitch and run the latter. Plenty of GMs prefer the former and have done so since the game came out.

These things are not incompatible. I run a gritty realistic version of the Star Wars universe where in that same universe there are cinematic heroes of great martial prowess. That's a matter in D&D terms of relative level. If you are a 6th level D&D character and you mostly encounter 1HD orcs, you're going to feel like a big darn cinematic hero. But if you are a 1st level D&D character and you mostly encounter 1HD orcs, you are going to feel like you are in a gritty world where all fights are dangerous and uphill and fights are worth avoiding as much as possible.

I don't have to choose here.

In the game, after 90 sessions or so, the PC hunters are pretty famous feared bounty hunters who are more than capable of holding their own with or absolutely destroying most opponents. Veteran Stormtroopers aren't pushovers, but they certainly outmatch them. At this point, they outmatch 1v1 most Stormtrooper special forces and covert ops units. Not again that they mostly fight stormtroopers, but for example several recent fights have been against the equivalent of veteran Stormtrooper "jump troopers" with jetpacks and gunship support (the fight against the corrupt SWAT team on Aparo prime, against The Aguila's resistance fighters on Lafra, etc.).

But yes, they are at the point now that a fight between them and say a dozen Commando Battle Droids is pretty one sided in their favor, the way it wouldn't be if regular Stormtroopers and Commando Battle Droids went at it.

[*]Pretty Armour Does Nothing (no bonus to soak from the armour)

That's just "dumb" in my opinion. If it does nothing, they wouldn't wear it. The Empire is pretty heavily on the side of penny pinching and if armor wasn't worthwhile, they wouldn't pay for it.

[*]Stats are Pretty Average, Actually (2D across the board)
[*]Basic Training is Basic (skills +1D at most)

That's Imperial Trooper level foes, not Stormtrooper level foes. I do have those, and they show up a lot, because unlike the movies I don't have to pay less for an extra if their face is hidden and doesn't need makeup or other work, and unlike video games I have no extra cost up front to render faces onto models. So I have no non-universe reason to make all the foes Stormtroopers to save costs. I can have viable Imperial Troopers that are still a level of dangerousness above that of ordinary people, while reserving room above that for a smaller more elite force directly under Palpatine's control.

Basically, Stormtroopers are 1 level above what you suggest. Physical stats tend to be in the 3D range, and combat skills tend to be +2D above that. That makes them comparable to all but a combat optimized starting PC, and means that they can do both 3D in blaster and reserve 3D for dodge when they want to (though they prefer taking cover to dodging) while still wearing armor and getting 4D soak against blasters. An Elite Stormtrooper (say an aging veteran Clone Trooper) or a typical Covert ops type Stormtrooper (say working with the Inquisitorius or the ISB) are about 2 pips above that that, so like 3D+1 Dex and 3D+2 Strength with blaster and dodge in the 5D+1 to 6D range, making them formidable foes (often with armor and weapons self-customized by a pip). Are you telling me based on the Clone Wars/Bad Batch cartoons that if you were to find a named Clone Trooper still in Imperial service a few years after the end of the Clone Wars that would strike you as unreasonable?

But against the bounty hunters, that might not be enough. I've got PCs with 7D in dodge and blaster, with customized gear that's like two pips better, so like a blaster rifle that does 5D+2 with a customized smart scope that adds 2D+2 to blaster if they take an aim action, and by my house rules you could take a called shot to drop 4 dice off blaster roll that to go to 7D+2 damage. I don't have a problem making these characters look like the cinematic action heroes in their own TV series or movies. I gradually getting up to the point where I need BBEG's with 9D and 10D and force points to spend in order to give the collective party a challenge.

[*]One Hit and I'm Out (any damage that exceeds soak takes one out; it makes for easy bookkeeping)

Same rules for everyone. I tend to not track unconscious mooks because it generally doesn't matter if they are dead or wake up in 30 minutes barely able to function, they are out of the scene, but foes get wounded and try to flee or keep fighting depending on the foe and the circumstances.

With the above modifications, and with the players wielding weapons doing 4D-5D damage, stormtroopers go down every time a PC hits one. A bunch of mooks with 3D in Blasters are still a threat, however, because it's possible that one of them will hit and 5D damage from a blaster rifle is no joke, so PCs will generally run from dozens of stormtroopers.

Absolutely not. 3D in Blasters when you are wearing medium armor that gives you a -1D penalty on Dexterity rolls results in a situation where you need hundreds or thousands of foes to be a realistic threat against these characters, and isn't even really a realistic threat against starting characters. 4D in blasters in my game is a civilian weapon hardly worth bringing to a firefight against a real military. The standard issue Imperial carbine does 4D+2 in my game. I have a PC with 5D strength and 1D+1 LIGHT armor who also has a 6D dodge. I've got another PCs with 3D+1 strength who is gearing up for powered battle armor who is probably going to be sporting something like 3D+1/2D+1 armor soon. And he really really wants to get some Beskar Steel. I've got a PC with 7D dodge and 7D sneak and like 7D in melee with a customized vibrosword, and he has stealthed urban camouflage clone trooper armor that means he's often rolling more than 7D to hide or creep up on someone.

And if I hadn't been planning for this by allowing for more of a power curve, then we'd long ago left the realm of plausible foes for them. As it is, we aren't even halfway to the level of someone that can seriously challenge Boba Fett, Han Solo, Chewbacca, or Luke Skywalker although collectively they might represent a non-trivial challenge to such characters.

 

[jian]

These things are not incompatible. I run a gritty realistic version of the Star Wars universe where in that same universe there are cinematic heroes of great martial prowess. That's a matter in D&D terms of relative level. If you are a 6th level D&D character and you mostly encounter 1HD orcs, you're going to feel like a big darn cinematic hero. But if you are a 1st level D&D character and you mostly encounter 1HD orcs, you are going to feel like you are in a gritty world where all fights are dangerous and uphill and fights are worth avoiding as much as possible.

I don't have to choose here.

In the game, after 90 sessions or so, the PC hunters are pretty famous feared bounty hunters who are more than capable of holding their own with or absolutely destroying most opponents. Veteran Stormtroopers aren't pushovers, but they certainly outmatch them. At this point, they outmatch 1v1 most Stormtrooper special forces and covert ops units. Not again that they mostly fight stormtroopers, but for example several recent fights have been against the equivalent of veteran Stormtrooper "jump troopers" with jetpacks and gunship support (the fight against the corrupt SWAT team on Aparo prime, against The Aguila's resistance fighters on Lafra, etc.).

But yes, they are at the point now that a fight between them and say a dozen Commando Battle Droids is pretty one sided in their favor, the way it wouldn't be if regular Stormtroopers and Commando Battle Droids went at it.



That's just "dumb" in my opinion. If it does nothing, they wouldn't wear it. The Empire is pretty heavily on the side of penny pinching and if armor wasn't worthwhile, they wouldn't pay for it.



That's Imperial Trooper level foes, not Stormtrooper level foes. I do have those, and they show up a lot, because unlike the movies I don't have to pay less for an extra if their face is hidden and doesn't need makeup or other work, and unlike video games I have no extra cost up front to render faces onto models. So I have no non-universe reason to make all the foes Stormtroopers to save costs. I can have viable Imperial Troopers that are still a level of dangerousness above that of ordinary people, while reserving room above that for a smaller more elite force directly under Palpatine's control.

Basically, Stormtroopers are 1 level above what you suggest. Physical stats tend to be in the 3D range, and combat skills tend to be +2D above that. That makes them comparable to all but a combat optimized starting PC, and means that they can do both 3D in blaster and reserve 3D for dodge when they want to (though they prefer taking cover to dodging) while still wearing armor and getting 4D soak against blasters. An Elite Stormtrooper (say an aging veteran Clone Trooper) or a typical Covert ops type Stormtrooper (say working with the Inquisitorius or the ISB) are about 2 pips above that that, so like 3D+1 Dex and 3D+2 Strength with blaster and dodge in the 5D+1 to 6D range, making them formidable foes (often with armor and weapons self-customized by a pip). Are you tell me based on the Clone Wars/Bad Batch cartoons that if you were to find a named Clone Trooper still in Imperial service a few years after the end of the Clone Wars that would strike you as unreasonable?

But against the bounty hunters, that might not be enough. I've got PCs with 7D in dodge and blaster, with customized gear that's like two pips better, so like a blaster rifle that does 5D+2 with a customized smart scope that adds 2D+2 to blaster if they take an aim action, and by my house rules you could take a called shot to drop 4 dice off blaster roll that to go to 7D+2 damage. I don't have a problem making these characters look like the cinematic action heroes in their own TV series or movies. I gradually getting up to the point where I need BBEG's with 9D and 10D and force points to spend in order to give the collective party a challenge.

Sounds like your campaign firmly chose option 1 (gritty) and then levelled up until it was closer to option 2, which is of course fine. My campaigns have pretty much always started with option 2 and levelled up until they were basically duelling Vader* or his equivalent as a matter of course.

*Actually in one game they killed the High Inquisitor, who was basically Bishounen Vader, in the second session, but that was a fairly collective effort.

As for why the Empire pays for armour if it does nothing - well, the answers are pretty obvious. It's cheap, it conceals your soldiers' identities and makes them more intimidating, and it improves your soldiers' morale (right until one of their pals gets a blaster bolt in the breadbasket, anyway). It probably helps a little bit against thrown rocks and sticks, which is what most protestors and civilians tend to have, but not enough to get you a stat bonus. It also has a built in gas mask, tracker, and communicator, which all help in situations that don't involve getting shot. It's the equivalent of a TIE fighter, which does more or less nothing to protect its pilot but is good for mass-production of flying guns.

 

[Celebrim]

Sounds like your campaign firmly chose option 1 (gritty) and then levelled up until it was closer to option 2, which is of course fine.

It's pretty much been gritty and cinematic from the start. You just throw different foes at them depending on their "level". So early on it was street level criminals, max mad level primitive warriors (complete with machine guns), average Imperial Troopers, corporate security, and that sort of thing. Now after many adventures they are at the level of meeting Prefects face to face, speaking with characters like Janus Greejatus and Senators, being celebrated by the Empire publicly as heroes while being secretly (and often not so secretly in a running joke about how often the ISB leaves tracking devices on their property) investigated by the ISB as traitors with the hopes that they'll lead the ISB to "bigger fish".

In story, they are the reason for the death of Bail Organa's first wife, the one that Leia in the movies remembers as her "real mother". On a job where they didn't know who they were getting paid by, they screwed up and left a trail that led back to her and the ISB assassinated her in a supposed "hunting accident". So actually, I've fixed up a plot hole here better than the EU did, simply by giving Bail two wives so that Leia can not remember Padme but only have vague memories of the woman she thinks is her real mother, while putting the PC's into the larger story in a small way.

Actually, come to think of it, the PC's are pretty hard on people's wives, since they were present for the death of Klaus Vandangante's wife which happened on a space station they were on which came under attack by pirate/slavers, triggering the fuel explosion mentioned in the story that left him a widower. Though in that case, they weren't responsible and they did save both Klaus and Jess's lives.

 

[Celebrim]

The solution to having very obviously lethal weapons like blasters/lightsabers while not having every PC get instakilled all the time is to reframe combat - lots more Near Misses and lots less "take X damage". Narratively - the only attack which actually connects is the killing/incapacitating blow.

Example: In Fate, when an incoming successful attack comes in, you can avoid it by taking Stress instead. Once your stress is maximized, then you start taking consequences - actual, debilitating wounds. Once your consequences are full, damage kills you. Stress is not hit points, marking stress doesn't mean you got shot. It's exactly what it sounds like - mental/physical strain from the stress of conflict. Stress doesn't measure how tough, burly, or durable you are. It respresents how long you can stay in a fight before that one serious hit lands on you.

A stormtrooper might have 2 stress and no consequences - a blaster bolt with a decent roll will just kill them. Roll really poorly? Your shot hit cover/flew wide, causing stress but no physical harm. A PC or major antagonist might have lots of stress and consequence slots - lots of space to resolve attacks as near misses or minor wounds before a serious hit sticks. A fight with between a jedi master and sith lord with lots of stress boxes will result in lots of blade clashes and dodges as stress gets whittled away, even though a single successful lightsaber strike will kill the loser instantly.

Having spent 3-4 years running D6 in a pretty comprehensive and intense way I really do think it could benefit from some sort of ablative protection that made death a little less a matter of bad or good luck. It's comparatively easy to balance a hit point system for tactical combat as you can work with expected damage per round numbers that over large data sets are going to be pretty relevant, while still having enough variation in "burst damage" to produce tension and drama. But if all you have is degree of success or failure, and no mitigating ablative protection like a hit point, then all you tend to have is death spirals and no way to mitigate the inevitable "burst damage".

So if I was writing D6 from scratch I might make it a bit more lethal but also have "Stress" or some similar mechanic that let you shake off wounds. In this case, Stormtroopers wouldn't have any Stress slots on their wound track at all, and even my elite ones might only have one, and so they really would drop "fast" while still also being mechanically elite and tough.

What I probably would do is introduce a tiering system where you automatically gained Stress slots on your wound track as you spent a certain amount of character points. That way, you wouldn't necessarily be one explosion or sniper shot away from dying at all times, and I wouldn't have to worry about what happens when a mook rolls a yatzhee of 6's while the PC rolls a yatzhee of 1's.

However, this would really require playtesting because what I wouldn't want to do is make the combat any slower. Combats tend to be pretty granular and high maintenance, since everything is resisted rolls and dynamic difficulties. A long firefight with many opponents can take hours to resolve as it is.

 

[zakael19]

Even in Andor, stormtroopers die from a single blaster shot from a rebel agent. This is a very strange hill to die on.