LucasC
First Post
We changed all our characters over to the new 1-skill rank per tier restriction. Here is the impact it had:
In general I was skeptical about this change but it didn't seem to be a problem at all, no one complained about it and it deflated the attack pools about 1 dice across the board. The only character heavily impacted was Grub and that was partially because he was not at gaming last week and so had not yet updated his skills to reflect the once-per-career skill selection.
Of note, there is at least one way to circumvent this restriction - both Tactics and Reactions add a die bonus to Initiative checks. With an open skill system, and this precedent in place, does that mean a player could select say, Shooting, Aiming, Marksman and Guns (Pistols) to gain a bonus on attack rolls with pistols? Clearly there would need to be Careers that offer this but you probably understand the point.
Combat Tricks
We had to change out our combat tricks to reflect the addition of AIM or FEINT as a default trick and following the updated attack pools.
I'm pretty sure they are the characters that see themselves as 'damage dealers' and with the enhancement to this trick moving it to a 1:1 trade off they definitely wanted it.
Combat tricks continue to be a popular rule among the players and I note that while some of these options were available prior to the inception of tricks, they never used them but now that they are special abilities on their sheets they're using them all the time.
Healing
Our group doesn't have a medic. Someone may switch out a career to go that way but everyone indicated a strong desire for some sort of in-combat healing. Think healing potions from fantasy games. This may be the function of the Medical Kit that is listed but not yet described in the rulebook?
We created a simple item for our purposes and are using this for now.
Combat
The LOW DEFENSE HIGH SOAK combat seemed to work out very well.
The only encounter we got all the way through involved 6 PCs and 2 droid sentries for each PC (12 total). My droids were attacking with as high as 9 or 10 dice due to their base (6 dice) + crossfire + high ground. Their damage was only 2 dice but I dropped 4 dice from most attacks and generally rolled against the PCs with 2-4 dice (typical attacks were up to -4 for damage and -2 for cover).
I'd say I hit more often than I missed. Most of the PCs have SOAK 10 with the ogron having SOAK 15. Thanks to the bonus damage I was able to hurt everyone I shot at including the ogron. Several PCs went down in the battle (3 I think) and that was generally due to placing themselves in a crossfire position allowing my droids to focus fire.
Everyone reported enjoying the combat system more than any of the others we've tried.
As far as we're concerned, this is the right way for combat to go.
LUCK
No one used LUCK last night at all.
- J5:
- dropped 2 ranks in Marksman but selected updated Career to gain additional AGI - net impact -1 die
- new attack pool 6 dice
- Therick
- dropped 1 rank in Marksman losing 1 die of attack
- new attack pool 5 dice
- Wireline
- dropped 1 rank in Marksman losing 1 die of attack
- new attack pool 5 dice
- Max
- dropped 1 rank in Marksman losing 1 die of attack
- new attack pool 5 dice
- Grub
- dropped 4 ranks in marksman losing 4 dice of attack
- new attack pool 3d6
- because of this change he adjusted his character concept entirely and switched from a ranged character to a melee character. He has a high STR score and low AGI - he is an ogron marine
In general I was skeptical about this change but it didn't seem to be a problem at all, no one complained about it and it deflated the attack pools about 1 dice across the board. The only character heavily impacted was Grub and that was partially because he was not at gaming last week and so had not yet updated his skills to reflect the once-per-career skill selection.
Of note, there is at least one way to circumvent this restriction - both Tactics and Reactions add a die bonus to Initiative checks. With an open skill system, and this precedent in place, does that mean a player could select say, Shooting, Aiming, Marksman and Guns (Pistols) to gain a bonus on attack rolls with pistols? Clearly there would need to be Careers that offer this but you probably understand the point.
Combat Tricks
We had to change out our combat tricks to reflect the addition of AIM or FEINT as a default trick and following the updated attack pools.
- Four of the six players selected DEADLY STRIKE
I'm pretty sure they are the characters that see themselves as 'damage dealers' and with the enhancement to this trick moving it to a 1:1 trade off they definitely wanted it.
Combat tricks continue to be a popular rule among the players and I note that while some of these options were available prior to the inception of tricks, they never used them but now that they are special abilities on their sheets they're using them all the time.
Healing
Our group doesn't have a medic. Someone may switch out a career to go that way but everyone indicated a strong desire for some sort of in-combat healing. Think healing potions from fantasy games. This may be the function of the Medical Kit that is listed but not yet described in the rulebook?
We created a simple item for our purposes and are using this for now.
- Stim: A stim restores 1d6 health
Combat
The LOW DEFENSE HIGH SOAK combat seemed to work out very well.
The only encounter we got all the way through involved 6 PCs and 2 droid sentries for each PC (12 total). My droids were attacking with as high as 9 or 10 dice due to their base (6 dice) + crossfire + high ground. Their damage was only 2 dice but I dropped 4 dice from most attacks and generally rolled against the PCs with 2-4 dice (typical attacks were up to -4 for damage and -2 for cover).
I'd say I hit more often than I missed. Most of the PCs have SOAK 10 with the ogron having SOAK 15. Thanks to the bonus damage I was able to hurt everyone I shot at including the ogron. Several PCs went down in the battle (3 I think) and that was generally due to placing themselves in a crossfire position allowing my droids to focus fire.
Everyone reported enjoying the combat system more than any of the others we've tried.
As far as we're concerned, this is the right way for combat to go.
LUCK
No one used LUCK last night at all.
