Edge of the Empire questions!

Hey! So it looks like I'm FINALLY gonna get to start up a gaming group with my friends, and as they're all huge star wars nerds like me, we're doing Edge of the Empire. I have the beginner set, but looking through the rules I have one question (and I will probably have more as we play)

It says in the rules that enemies do not suffer strain, but instead take those points of strain directly to their wound threshold. Does this mean that if an enemy rolls to attack, and rolls a threat, that they take a point of damage? Couldn't an enemy literally kill itself in this way by just rolling enough threats?

Take all of this with a big disclaimer of "If I read the rules right..."

A couple things:

So, only Minions and Rivals cannot suffer strain, and suffer it as Wounds instead. Nemeses have their own Strain Thresholds and can suffer strain normally. Additionally, and this is GM discretion, but Rivals can suffer Critical Injuries and die that way, instead of dying when they hit their Wound Threshold. It depends on how you want to run the encounter.

Rolling Threat doesn't necessarily cause a person to suffer strain. That's the easiest thing to fall back on if you're trying to speed through or can't think up anything for the situation, but there's a number of other things that threat can cause that are detailed in the book.

Additionally, it's GM discretion "based on the circumstances" as far as if a Minion or Rival is incapacitated or killed when hitting their wound threshold. So if a minion or rival suffers Strain due to rolling Threat that causes it reach its wound threshold, it will either die or be incapacitated. It would be up to the GM/players to come up with a narrative way for this to occur. Perhaps he tripped and hit his head, whether due to clumsiness or because a stray blaster shot caught his leg out from under him, or maybe he was already so wounded/exhausted that he just finally collapsed. This would be more akin to a Despair result (though there's nothing saying you can't do it, if it makes sense), but perhaps his blaster malfunctioned and blew up in his hand.

Unless I was trying to speed the combat along though, I'd probably come up with something else to spend the Threat on.

Well in the full rules there are different ways to spend threats (such as guns running out of ammo) but doing threats to wounds for the lower end bad guys is probably the simplest way to deal with them whilst you're learning....and yes if you're doing that it would be entirely plausible for an enemy to take himself out of the fight through "strain" alone (would be up to the GM to rule whether an npc taken out in such a way is still alive or not though)

Did our first session today! The players seemed to enjoy it a lot, though they're still not quite there on the whole "roleplaying" aspect, but I'm hoping that will improve once we make our own characters instead of just using the pre-generated ones in the beginner game.

By far the hardest part of the game was coming up with stuff for the advantages/disadvantages. There was a particular scenario where a player succeeded at a charm check, but had two disadvantages, and I could not for the life of me come up with a narrative consequence. It's also hard when they fail a check but get advantages, like, "that thing you wanted to do doesn't happen, but now you have to come up with an entirely different good thing to happen!"

Two specific questions I have:

- At one point, our wookie wanted to bash someone upside the head and knock them out. I had no idea how to do that. I eventually just had them roll a melee attack vs. the NPC's brawn stat, which I don't think was a great solution, but I needed to come up with something. Is there a better way to do this? How can the PC's "knock out" someone?

- I don't really understand stun grenades. Do they have an AoE effect, or do they only work on one person? And they specify "Stun Damage", but I don't really know how that's different from normal damage, other than it deals strain instead of wounds (unless they're being used on an enemy with no strain threshold, in which case it still deals wounds. Which still seems odd to me.) The player wanted to use them right off the bat at the start of the session to stun three Gamorean guards at once, and I wasn't sure if or how they could do that.


Again, the players had a lot of fun, so it looks like this is something we could be doing frequently, meaning I'm probably going to buy the game master's guide and the player's handbook, so hopefully some of this might become a little more clear, but until then, what is everyone else's thoughts?

-Charm! Sooo, book says that when you get a threat on Charm checks, then it can lower your standing with the person you're convincing. So maybe the person you're charming just begrudgingly does what you're asking, but it kind of ticks him off that you'd ask, for instance. Additionally, if you were trying to charm 3 people, maybe a success and 2 threats means that you only charmed one of them. Maybe it's their boss, so the charm goes through, but maybe the henchmen are a bit ticked about it. Maybe something comes from that, later on? Of course, this is situational, and it doesn't work in all cases, but that should give you an idea.

-When they fail a roll but get advantages, I try to think of a way that they could "fail upwards." Think of the very specific thing they're trying to get done, and then (almost like a genie trying to twist their words on a wish) give them something else instead. So maybe they're trying to hack into this Imperial officer's computer to figure out a bomb's disarm code, as one example. They fail, but they get advantages. They don't get access to the computer (or at least not the parts of it that they want), but maybe they figure out the officer's itinerary, so that they could go and beat the information out of him. If they're trying to make a coordination check to keep balance as they cross a beam, maybe failure means they fall, but the advantages allow them to catch on the beam before plummeting.

I wouldn't stress too much about the advantages/threats. Also, make sure that you open it up to the players for input and ideas! Especially when it comes to their advantages, and provide suggestions if they seem lost. Don't worry about ignoring some advantages/threats if it's slowing things down. Not every single one needs a dramatic and explosive use. And always refer to healing/suffering strain if you have to.

Question #1: When someone suffers their full Strain threshold, they fall unconscious. Technically your Wookie could have tried to hit them with a melee attack and try to do enough Strain damage to incapacitate them. Maybe they get some Boost or an Upgrade for the target being unaware. If they didn't do enough damage, maybe advantages could be spent on "stunning them in such a way that they don't think to call out for help, or maybe karate chopping them in the throat so that they can't call for help," giving you enough time to make another attack. Of course, is any of that necessary? It's up to your group, of course, but I'd probably just let the Wookie make an attack roll and if they hit/do more damage than the dude's soak, have the guy get knocked out. If he's not some boss villain, and just some thug/grunt, then why not let the Wookie rough him up and keep the suspense and action moving along? Just my two cents :)

Question #2: The AoE of stun grenades is represented by the Blast Quality. By default, all qualities cost 2 Advantages to activate, if they don't specify another amount. If you're just lobbing a grenade at someone, you'll deal damage to them like any other ranged weapon. However, if you have enough advantages to activate the Blast Quality, then you deal damage equal to the Blast Rating (Blast 8, in the Stun Grenade's case) plus any net Hits on the attack roll to all targets (friend or foe) who are engaged to the original target. For example...

Baddie A is engaged to Baddie B and Friendly C. You throw a stun grenade at Baddie A. You roll 2 Hits and no Advantages. Due to a poor throw or other circumstances, the explosion only hurts Baddie A. It deals 10 damage (base 8 + 2 net hits). However, if the roll was 2 Hits and 2 Advantages, then you could activate the Blast Quality. This would mean that Baddie A suffers 10 damage (Base 8 + 2 net hits), Baddie B would suffer 10 damage (Blast 8 + 2 net hits) and Friendly C would suffer 10 damage (Blast 8 + 2 net hits). Then subtract soak as normal.

The Blast quality also has the nice effect that even if the grenade attack is a miss, you can spend 3 advantages to still deal damage to the target and everyone engaged to the target equal to the blast quality of the grenade.

Stun Grenades also have the Disorient quality. If you activate this (paying 2 advantages to do so), then targets suffer 1 setback on all actions for a number of rounds equal to the disorient rating (3 in the case of stun grenades). There are a couple ways you could stun the Gamorean guards. Hit them, activate Blast and fill their thresholds so that they fall unconscious. If they'd still be up after suffering X strain, then you could activate Disorient (if you had enough advantages) and flavor it that way. Though they're still acting, they're dazed.

Also, you don't have to follow explosives rules to the T if it makes more sense to do something else. If those guards were in a confined area, maybe it wouldn't take much to hit them "accurately," and if it was a small space, then maybe don't even bother rolling. Maybe instead it could be a Resilience test to not get knocked out automatically, or maybe don't roll at all and reward the PCs for being prepared with a stun grenade and using it effectively. Obey the Rule of Cool! If everyone thinks it's cool, then go for it!

As far as Stun Damage goes, it operates basically the same as Lethal/Non-Stun/Normal damage. You deal critical hits exactly the same. If the target doesn't have a stun threshold, then they suffer wounds instead, but when they hit their wound threshold they'll likely just fall unconscious instead of dying (though up to you in the end).

Also you can be pleased to know that there is no Game Master's Guide that you need for this. Just having the Core Rulebook "Edge of the Empire" is enough. There are plenty of other supplements with some nifty tools, extra specializations, interesting locales, vehicles, etc. And then there's also Age of Rebellion to play as rebels and Force & Destiny to play as jedi.