Saga Edition Thread III: Saga Academy

[Nerd-o-rama]

So I'm running a SWSE game whenever someone can't attend our normally schedule game of 5E, and I'm not very learned in the system yet. I'm running Dawn of Defiance, and one of the players, a hovering... astromech... droid thing, sliced into Sel Zonn station's main computer. By just continuing to improve his access over and over again.

Is that application of Use Computer just spammable, over and over again? Because he optimized his Use Computer to the point where failure was highly unlikely, and I'm worried this could be an issue in the future.

I'm running Dawn of Defiance for my home face to face group, and my wife is playing a slicing-optimized Jawa. Aside from the usual politics of someone you share a bed and a mortgage with playing in your RPG game, I have noticed a few points where Use Computer checks have made things easier than they should be. However, that can be mitigated by making sure you use the rules as written.

1) Most central computer systems are going to start at Hostile, no matter what terminal or data port you're using to access them, unless you have a code cylinder/password from that Imperial bureaucrat you just shot in the head. That's a -10 to the initial access check. Even after Skill Focusing in Use Computer, that means you're looking at 1d20+Int+1/2 level+maybe 2 from equipment trying to hit the computer's Will Defense. It's doable, but remember that failure means Security getting summoned (a combat or Stealth encounter) and failure by 5+ locks out the connection they were using.
2) Even after you improve it away from Hostile, you still need 2 more checks to get to Friendly (at -5 and -2) and a final one to get to Helpful, so players beware blowing through limited resources like Force Points
3) Most computers are going to have a Will Defense of 17-20. If you want something that's impossible to access without blowing a Destiny Point and multiple Force Points, feel free to say it's got central bank-level security (Will Defense 30), making it basically impossible to make non-Hostile until you get to very high levels.
4) At any point you find reasonable (such as failing multiple Improve Access checks in a short period of time), remember you can have a sysadmin come in and automatically override whatever the slicer is doing with routine actions ("power off remote terminal Q") unless the slicer already has a Helpful attitude from the computer. If the slicer already has a Helpful attitude, the sysadmin can do the same thing with opposed Use Computer checks.
5) Contrary to what I made the mistake of establishing in my game, there's no such thing as wifi in Star Wars unless you say there is. Slicers need to find a terminal or a dataport, and unless they and the target both have HoloNet access (unlikely in the time period of Dawn of Defiance), they need either a physical connection to the terminal they're trying to hack, or to establish communications with it remotely through, say, a starship's communications systems. Last time I had my wife's character try to remote hack a capital ship, I just had them turn their radio off and it was done with. EDIT: and actually, after checking Starships of the Galaxy, there's not actually any rules that say you can establish communications if the other guy isn't willing to pick up. Best to do your hacking while the enemy captain is gloating over a hailing frequency, then.

Also, related protip: say all the droid enemies DoD likes to throw out have Locked Access. You don't know pain/hilarity until you have a Jawa crawling all over a battle droid to hit its off switch.


Also note that all of this is regarding central god-computers of places like Imperial military bases, Darga's palace, Cloud city, Imperial Star Destroyers, etc. Slicer characters can and should be able to access more limited systems that don't automatically have a Hostile attitude, like (most) elevators, security doors, public access terminals, datapads, etc., so that their skills have a use. Just a use other than "all your base are belong to me."