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Pendragonx
2008-05-07, 09:42 PM
Hey all

I'm currently running a chapter of the standard Dawn of Defiance campaign for 2 players. I've run into a bit of a snag, however.. or at least a learning curve.. it's the first time sofar that we've run into spaceship combat. We got halfway through the session, and my players weren't doing well, and the combat was taking ages with no real progression.

The real probelm here is that I've only got 2 players - the encounter was certainly designed for more than 2, so it's obvious that this is an issue.

Regardless of that fatal flaw, I'm wondering what I can do to rescue this scenario: Both players are not trained in Pilot ..their scores are roughly 5 or 6 untrained. They are both piloting different vehicles. This wouldn't be tooo bad... however, if I recall correctly when you make pilots checks you add in the vehicle size modifier.. -5 for gargantuan size... so they end up having a score of 1 or less ...trying to compete with NPC fighterships in dogfights with pilot scores of +6 and +7 becomes near impossible.

i was thinking of perhaps removing the size modifier for their rolls to help even things out..or maybe just havling the damage they get dealt (but if they never hit anything themselves the encounter wont really progress, i would think).

Do any of you have a suggestion here? Do I have the rules wrong with Pilot checks?

KillianHawkeye
2008-05-07, 10:11 PM
You have the rules right. And if you decide to remove the size penalties for your PCs, shouldn't you also remove them from the NPCs? Of course, that wouldn't solve the problem at all.

Piloting a ship in Star Wars is like driving a car IRL. Basically, anybody can do it. That does NOT mean that everybody should be able to handle themselves in a dogfight, however. If your players can't, then they should find some other way to resolve the situation, or just run away (even starfighters have hyperdrives). I'm not familiar with the adventure, so I don't know if that is possible or how badly it would mess things up.

Another idea is to have the two of them try to work together as best as possible and focus their efforts. IIRC, doesn't Saga Ed have rules for Aiding Another?

More specific suggestions would depend on what type of characters your PCs are playing. You may just have to bail them out of this one.

Lemur
2008-05-08, 12:45 AM
There's a really simple solution to this. Just eliminate spaceship combat from your game. You can run a campaign perfectly fine without it, the action will just be centered on planets and space stations for the most part. Unless your PCs object to this, which I doubt they will (neither of them seem interested in being spacepilots based on their skill choices), I don't see any reason why doing this would be infeasible.

Mando Knight
2008-05-08, 02:53 PM
Both players are not trained in Pilot ..their scores are roughly 5 or 6 untrained. They are both piloting different vehicles. This wouldn't be tooo bad... however, if I recall correctly when you make pilots checks you add in the vehicle size modifier.. -5 for gargantuan size... so they end up having a score of 1 or less ...trying to compete with NPC fighterships in dogfights with pilot scores of +6 and +7 becomes near impossible.

Remove dogfights from your encounters. Otherwise it's like 3PO trying to defeat Fett in unarmed combat. They don't have the benefit of Vehicular Combat, so that takes out the main method of avoiding damage... and they're sure to lose any dogfight checks.

Piloting checks are made with the vehicle's DEX modifiers, as page 169 says: "The pilot adds the vehicle's size modifier and Dexterity modifier on all Initiative and Pilot checks." I don't think that you would use your own DEX for that check in that case...

Also, even though it's generally not recommended, you may want to add a few NPCs to function as the missing players. (Not DM Mary Sues, though. Those are annoying.) The players you have need the extra help (of course, they will currently progress in levels about 2x as fast, since they've got half a group...) and the NPCs can be built to optimize in skills that your PCs don't have... like a fighter jockey who's got Skill Focus (Pilot), Vehicular Combat, Weapon Proficiency and Focus (Heavy Weapons)... make them slightly less optimized than the actual PCs so that they don't steal the spotlight. (Or optimize them for one skill so their spotlight-stealing is very situational, so they become more of a tool than a spotlight-thief...)

Pendragonx
2008-05-08, 05:33 PM
thanks for your replies.. all interesting advice. I guess it boils down to me sitting the players down and presenting them with some options, and try to figure out how we'll handle aerial vehicle combat. It was easier to figure out regular combat, as both players could always find ways to have fun and be effective. Ho hum.. a GM's life is never dull :smallbiggrin: