[SWSE] How do you deal with exp in starship battles?

[Asmor]

It seems to me that there's one huge problem with starships... Off the top of my head, an X-Wing is something like a CL 11 or 12! Am I really supposed to give a first level player several thousand exp for shooting down an X-Wing in a dogfight, especially when they're piloting a more powerful ship?

On the other hand, just giving them exp equal to the pilot of the other ship doesn't seem like a good idea, since the default assumption is something with a couple unheroic levels at best...

How would you adjudicate exp in a starship battle? And to keep things simple, let's assume all starcraft are single-person ships...

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

It seems to me that there's one huge problem with starships... Off the top of my head, an X-Wing is something like a CL 11 or 12! Am I really supposed to give a first level player several thousand exp for shooting down an X-Wing in a dogfight, especially when they're piloting a more powerful ship?

On the other hand, just giving them exp equal to the pilot of the other ship doesn't seem like a good idea, since the default assumption is something with a couple unheroic levels at best...

How would you adjudicate exp in a starship battle? And to keep things simple, let's assume all starcraft are single-person ships...

My current solution would probably be:
Subtract the characters ship Challenge Level (without crew modifiers, as these values are replaced by the character ones) from the Challenge Level of the enemy vehicles (including its crew modifiers). If the enemy ship is piloted by a statted NPC (instead of ajust a generic crew modifier), use the same base value as for the characters and add the NPCs level.

This way, if a 4th level character in an X-Wing engages a 2nd level NPC in an X-Wing, he would effectively gain XP as if he jus fought a 2nd level NPC "on ground" without space craft.
Makes the most sense to me.

 

[Asmor]

That would seem to be a simple solution and, on the face of things at least, a balanced one...

However, I wonder if, say, a level 8 scoundrel in an x-wing is really twice as good as a level 4 scoundrel in one.

Also, what would you do in the case of a PC using a ship which is significantly higher in CL than the NPC's ship, so much so that its effective CL would be 0 or lower? I guess it sort of makes sense in that it shouldn't be much of a challenge for a star destroyer to pwn an x-wing...

 

[Nifft]

My current solution would probably be:
Subtract the characters ship Challenge Level (without crew modifiers, as these values are replaced by the character ones) from the Challenge Level of the enemy vehicles (including its crew modifiers). If the enemy ship is piloted by a statted NPC (instead of ajust a generic crew modifier), use the same base value as for the characters and add the NPCs level.

This way, if a 4th level character in an X-Wing engages a 2nd level NPC in an X-Wing, he would effectively gain XP as if he jus fought a 2nd level NPC "on ground" without space craft.
Makes the most sense to me.

This looks good.

I'll run it by our GM and see what he has to say.

Thanks! -- N

 

[Kaffis]

That would seem to be a simple solution and, on the face of things at least, a balanced one...

However, I wonder if, say, a level 8 scoundrel in an x-wing is really twice as good as a level 4 scoundrel in one.

Also, what would you do in the case of a PC using a ship which is significantly higher in CL than the NPC's ship, so much so that its effective CL would be 0 or lower? I guess it sort of makes sense in that it shouldn't be much of a challenge for a star destroyer to pwn an x-wing...

As for the second part -- if the ships are so mis-matched in power, yes, that will skew things a lot and it makes sense for not a lot of experience to be earned.

My initial thoughts on how to handle it would be to add pilot and ship and get a ratio -- then scale the ratio of the opponent to the character's xp level.

So a level 6 scoundrel vs. a level 2 scoundrel both in X-Wings would be a 16 vs. a 12 -- the level 6 scoundrel is 33% better rather than 200% better, as you put it. So you'd award experience as if the level 2 scoundrel in his X-Wing were a level 4 being faced on the ground.

I think this goes to mitigate some of the problems you'd get with mismatched ships. The above level 6 scoundrel would face, for instance, two CR 1 pilots in TIE Fighters, which sounds right from an odds-in-the-movies standpoint, though I haven't played around enough with starship combat yet to judge if that's an "even" encounter in the game.

 

[Arkhandus]

Remember that anyone who is participating in the fight gets a share of the XP; if you can only shoot down that enemy ship because your own ship's pilot is getting you the angle you need or keeping your weapon turret/whatever from getting shot at, then that pilot's getting a share of the XP too. And remember XP is calculated more on a per encounter basis than a per-enemy basis; just cuz PC A gunned down enemy B, does not mean he automatically gets the full share of XP for himself. The XP for the battle on a whole is calculated in the end and distributed amongst all surviving, victorious participants. So if your ship has only stayed active cuz the engineer has been constantly working damage control and keeping the ship's engine/power core from dying after getting shot at, the engineer's earning XP too for helping out in the battle. Etc.

 

[Arkhandus]

Also: XP for a starship battle would generally be determined by the CR of the ship, at least primarily. The skill/experience of the pilot would adjust the CR of the ship if it's significant; cuz obviously, if an ace pilot and a rookie pilot are both using identical starfighters, the ace pilot's starfighter is going to be more effective, dangerous, and probably more resilient, just by virtue of their elite skills in dodging and aiming shots and handling maneuvers.

The rulebook should say something about determining Encounter Levels or similar; that's where you check the CR of stuff and consult a chart to see what their effective EL is, then the EL determines how much of a multiplier (if any) is applied to the Experience Point reward for that encounter. That would be the multiplier you'd use on the XP from the defeated starship's CR. I'm not sure if the pilot's own CR should apply fully or not to this, since the pilot's own personal weaponry, personal hit points, etc. aren't being used in the starship battle.

 

[Aussiegamer]

glad to see they did not fix up the vehicle xp issue from future.

My suggestion is to treat all vehicles as equipment, thus the craft itself grants no xp for destroying it the pilot does.

So if the players have certain craft and this allow the NPCs to have the same then the pilots CR is the xp amount.

If the players gear is well better/ worse than NPC then adjust by +/- 4 CR.

 

[Kaffis]

Also: XP for a starship battle would generally be determined by the CR of the ship, at least primarily. The skill/experience of the pilot would adjust the CR of the ship if it's significant; cuz obviously, if an ace pilot and a rookie pilot are both using identical starfighters, the ace pilot's starfighter is going to be more effective, dangerous, and probably more resilient, just by virtue of their elite skills in dodging and aiming shots and handling maneuvers.

The rulebook should say something about determining Encounter Levels or similar; that's where you check the CR of stuff and consult a chart to see what their effective EL is, then the EL determines how much of a multiplier (if any) is applied to the Experience Point reward for that encounter. That would be the multiplier you'd use on the XP from the defeated starship's CR. I'm not sure if the pilot's own CR should apply fully or not to this, since the pilot's own personal weaponry, personal hit points, etc. aren't being used in the starship battle.

This still presents the original problem. Nobody's suggesting that only the gunners are reaping the experience reward and thus inflating the amount of experience to them.

No, the concern is that if you calculate the encounter levels by including the starships, your level 5 party in a CR 10 ship fighting other ships which make a CR 15 are getting the CR 15 experience -- 3000 per encounter, vs. fighting a level appropriate ground challenge, which would be 1000 per encounter.

 

[pawsplay]

Well, a group of CL 1 PCs would be in significant danger inside a starship; it is unlikely they would have the feats and abilities to be truly effective in combat, and even an Average TIE fighter pilot can outgun them. If a 1st level character got inside a cockpit and shot down several TIEs, well, I guess they can be level 2 now. It's self-correcting in that sense.

That said, there are some quirks of the system... unique characters who are part of the adventure are worth XP, incidental crew are not.... what about unique crew, then?