In many roleplaying games there comes a time where player characters have acquired so much XP, equipment, and abilities that the game balance begins to suffer. Whether it be PCs who are undefeatable by the provided enemies or player-to-player balance breaking down outside of the so called “sweet spot,” this phenomenon can have quite a negative effect on a group’s enjoyment of a long running game. Keep reading to find out about my experience running high-XP Star Wars, and how I plan on putting the system through its paces at epic levels.
My Experience So Far
Recently in my Scions of the Sith campaign, in which players began as acolytes at the Sith Academy on Korriban and are now apprenticed to Sith Lords, the PCs went up against a session based on the Hammer Station Flashpoint from Star Wars: The Old Republic. The four PCs are at roughly 350 earned XP plus some extras such as a free extra talent tree and force power. Two PCs are focusing on supporting roles and two on lightsaber combat. I would describe the group as having a skillful Inquisitor, a pragmatic infiltrator, a defensive duelist, and a critical striker. Here are some of the threats they faced, and defeated, for an idea of what I throw up against them at this level of XP.
The DN-314 Tunneller droid served as a solo threat in a relatively large and open area. You will notice I have made the threat a character as opposed to a vehicle but still applied the Massive rule to it.
DN-314 Tunneller [Rival]
Br 6, Ag 2, Int 2, Cun 1, WP 2, Pres 1
Soak 9, W. Threshold 100, M/R Def 0/1
Skills: Brawl 3, Cool 3, Gunnery 3, Perception 2, Ranged (Heavy) 3,
Talents: Adversary 2, Massive 2, Durable 2, Heroic Fortitude
Abilities: Droid Traits, Silhouette 3, Multiple Combat Turns
Equipment: Excavation Blaster (Gunnery; Damage 15; Blast 8), Mining Laser (Ranged [Heavy]; Damage 8; Crit 3, Pierce 2), Mining Claws (Melee; Damage 12; Crit 2, Pierce 5)
The droid’s Massive 2 was little help against my critical striker (Soresu/Assassin). To keep the fight meaningful, I decided to invoke rule zero and flip a point to the PC side to “negate” an early 151 crit into “only” 50 points of extra damage. Ultimately, this threat became a speed bump.
In order to make the final fight a true challenge I built out Battlelord Kreshan as follows. I paired him with two groups of four minions based on Stormtrooper stats.
Battlelord Kreshan [Nemesis]
Br 4, Ag 4, Int 2, Cun 3, WP 3, Pres 3
Soak 6, W. Threshold 30, S. Threshold 17, M/R Def 1/1
Skills: Brawl 2, Coerce 2, Cool 2, Melee 3, Perception 3, Ranged (All) 3, Vigilance 3
Talents: Adversary 4, Parry 6, Aura of Command, Heroic Fortitude, Lethal Blows 2, Soft Spot
Abilities: Multiple Combat Turns (one additional turn at the end of the round)
Equipment: Battlelord’s Sword (Melee; Damage 8; Crit 3; Accurate 1, Cortosis, Defensive 1, Pierce 2, Vicious 2), battle armor (+2 soak, +1 defense)
You’ve read it right, I gave Kreshan Adversary 4 and Parry 6. The two groups of minions were dealt with by the support/skill PCs, with Kreshan engaged by the two lightsaber focused PCs. He was able to hold his own, even taking one of my PC’s hands, before being dispatched after a suitably epic fight. While a threat to life and limb, Kreshan ultimately posed little threat of a Total Party Kill. In all, spot on what was needed to cap off the session.
Initial Observations
While my Scions of the Sith group has only now entered what I would consider high-XP play, I have noticed a few trends emerging that I will be keen to investigate in my stress tests. Since these observations come only from one set of PCs, I am hesitant to offer more than a reportage analyzing more data.
Firstly, as expected, I am seeing powerful talent/equipment combos emerging. The most visible example of this in the group is my critical striker saber user (Soresu Defender/Assassin) with his crit rating 1, curved hilt lightsaber that can output consistently powerful critical injuries when combining rolled advantage, auto-advantage, and multiple ranks of Lethal Blows. Less dramatic but almost equally impactful is the defensive ability of my defensive duelist (Makashi Duelist/Shii Cho Knight) saber user, who combines generous investment in Parry with as much Grit as he can reasonably take to hold attackers at bay.
These factors lead to the next observation: the threats provided for me at the back of the book, even the dreaded create-an-inquisitor, no longer provide a sufficient threat. Certainly I still get a lot of utility out of the existing threats for use as Minions or lower-end Rivals, but to truly challenge my PCs I need to take time out to tweak a Nemesis or create a new one from whole cloth. Adversary and Parry have been very handy to scale up the defensive abilities of threats, with Multiple Combat Turns scaling up the offensive in turn. I’ll be curious to see how threats will hold up in my Edge of the Empire and Age of Rebellion tests, where gun totting threats are more the norm. I suspect with less Pierce/Breach in the PC’s hands I will be able to rely on Soak more extensively.
Thirdly, I am surprised to report I have not seen heavy Force use from the PCs in this campaign. This is probably a peculiarity of my own group, as my players tend to shy away from over-specialization. No one is playing a Sorcerer concept, so no one is (ab)using high level Move or Unleash. I think this is mostly because my players have prioritized skills and combat over the Force, so as costs for high tier talents, high rank skills, and new trees start to add up I suspect the PCs will find investment into Force powers increasingly economical.
The Stress Test
As a service to you, the dedicated readers of d20radio Blog, I will be stress testing FFG’s SW RPG at high earned XP levels with my home group. My players will make high XP characters and will select or be granted equipment to match. The characters will be ones that my players would enjoy running in a real campaign, and I will conduct the stress test by running a few sessions according to my usual home game style. Here are the XP levels for my tests:
Edge of the Empire: 600 XP – 15,000 Credits worth of kit
Age of Rebellion: 800 XP – Kit list as approved by GM
Force and Destiny 1000 XP – Kit list as approved by GM
I’ll be very curious to see what Force and Destiny characters are generated by my testing players. My group has a shared belief that Force using characters have multiple attractive XP sinks which will tend to prevent a character from becoming particularly powerful in any one area. Anecdotally, my Sith Inquisitor PC is fairly weak because his character is spread very wide across skills, talents, Force powers, and combat abilities. Look forward to an initial follow up on this article once I get a few sessions of 600 XP Edge of the Empire on the table.
Have you been playing the Star Wars Roleplaying Game at high XP levels? How has that experience been? Let me know in the comments below!
Christopher Hunt
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I frequently run in the 350-400 xp range. It seems to be fine unless a player has hyper focused. In one Edge game a player was taking the aim action and rolling 7 Proficiency dice to make a sniper shot. Even with soak he was averaging 17 damage. This made me get creative, but in all honesty it was game breaking. Everyone else at the same xp were manageable. I love this system but I do see it begin to fall apart with hyper focused players. Any advice?
Hi Gigerstreak, I didn’t forget about you! So to be totally honest, right now I don’t have a magical answer for you. I assume your player is rocking multiple ranks of True Aim, that is definitely one of the combos that has emerged as problematic for the GM in this system. At that point when it comes to a straight up shooting fight, that player is going to dominate.
True Aim in particular is a big problem because it would take a lot of Adversary and/or Reflect to mitigate. I think when you get powerful builds like that emerging, its important to try and focus on providing varied experiences and ensuring there is a sort of balance of effectiveness among the players at the situations you present them. Ensuring there is a good balance of social and skillful (knowledge, technical, stealth, athletics, survival etc) challenges helps, as does having encounters that challenge the overspecialized player in interesting ways.
Multiple Rivals in close quarters with this player is something he probably isn’t as prepared for. At that XP range I think its going to be appropriate to have threats with multiple ranks of Adversary show up because at that point, these guys are among some of the most skilled in the galaxy. Also consider if your encounters have objectives beyond eliminating all opponents. Sure this guy is going to be dealing a lot of damage, and that will have an impact, but if there’s something suitably awesome for your other players to do (like the actual mission, saving the princess or what have you) that will help keep the awesomeness balance in check from a narrative perspective. Its important to make sure your other players get to feel heroic, but you need to balance that with not overly penalizing this player – its not like he is cheating or something, so he should be given chances to shine in combat to put that XP to good use. Its a balancing game.
I know this doesn’t help a lot, but I’m glad to hear from you and will be thinking about your situation alongside what I observe in my stress tests. All the best!
One of my players is very much a power-gamer, and our main campaign is rocking 600-700 xp with equipment to match. Crafting threats is definitely challenging, but not impossible. I often will increase wound or strain thresholds on the fly if I under or over-estimated my PCs. I also try to craft unique challenges, either requiring skills they’ve neglected (dropping not so subtle hints that players shouldn’t hyper specialize) or using weapons that they aren’t prepared for. Send melee NPCs vs shooty PCs or vice versa; use ion blasters vs your super-cyborg PC; if they have insanely high wound thresholds, set weapons to stun.
Thade, all great suggestions! Thanks for posting! At that XP level, surely the PCs are well known at least in certain circles. If you were going up against Boba Fett, you would study his tactics and pick your own accordingly. I’m also all about adjusting wounds and strain on the fly if need be. My only caution to readers is to be careful not to negate PC abilities too often, if you let them own face as a True Aim master sniper or melee monster once and a while it will go over better, and with more impact, when you do put them in a situation they aren’t prepared for.