Some rules questions after playing through the beginner game

[Some rules questions after playing through the beginner game]

Thanks for the reply, it has helped greatly.

About the chase though, I am not sure I explained my 'problem' well enough.

When a PC or NPC has to track how far he is from something behind and something in front which one is used when calculating distance brackets and how does it effect the other.

e.g.) NPC is short distance in front of a PC behind him, but long distance from his goal in front of him. It is the NPCs turn and I want him to advance forwards towards his goal. Does the maneuver use the long to medium bracket of the goal in front of him requiring 2 maneuvers or does he use 1 maneuver to go from short to medium from the PC behind him. If the former, then what distance should he be considered from the PC, if the latter what distance is he from his goal?

Maybe I am over complicating this but as range brackets matter for weapon shots or to 'trigger' an event, I would like to wrap my head around this.

Cheers.

[Some rules questions after playing through the beginner game]

Hi all,

I have just finished DMing D&D for a group of friends and decided to take a break from D&D and try Star Wars, so I bought a copy of the beginner box.

A few questions arose that I couldn't really answer so winged it to keep the game moving but now would like to know if there are more concrete rules.

1) A player was hidden from view from the 3 storm troopers guarding the control center. They wanted to lean out from the corner, aim and shoot the storm troopers.

I wasn't sure how to handle the maneuvers and initiative for this. I cannot find rules handling surprise when it comes to initiative. I had everyone role initiative as to me it seems like this would start combat, but if the PCs rolled badly and didn't get the 1st slot it didn't feel right. They did luckily, but still begs the question about surprise. With the maneuvers I said he could lean out from around a corner aim and then lean back with his one maneuver (shooting the guard obviously during this). Something felt 'off' about this though. I meant the stormtroopers had no target and wouldn't leave their post so he kept doing this while the other PCs ran after the approaching 2nd group of stormtroopers.

2) How do you tack distance to something whilst tracking distance from something?

Luckily we ran out of time and just wrapped up the adventure with a quick narrative and didn't have to figure this one out. But essentially how would I track the distance of the bad guys AT-ST to the comm post and also the distance the PCs were behind him, when on his turn he moves from extreme to long to the comm post. My PCs were split into 2 groups. One being medium distance behind him, and the other were short distance behind them.

3) The speeds of the vehicles didn't seem to matter, what's that about?

4) One shot from the troopers on bikes took out the PC on his bike, wow that seemed overpowered, is it really that easy to blow stuff up?

 

p.s. I have had to post this twice, as my first post just never appeared!