Looking for Canon and "Unbalanced" houserules

[Josep Maria 685]

Hi everyone!

 

I just feel curious. Since almost the beginning I'm trying to look (or create my own) house rules based on emulate (as much as possible) the SW universe canon without caring about "balance".

 

For example, I would like to know your house rules about species like Wookies. Do you add extra XP to them or increase the 1 stat?

 

As I use to say, imagine to scientists, both of them are brilliant, the same "mental" level, but on of them it's like a "Greek Adonis" (well fitted, tall, "perfect" face and body proportions) and the other one, well, isn't so handsome and well fitted XD

 

Those two scientists, on rules effects have probably the same stats and XP (or close enough).

 

So, would love to know what "houserules" do you apply without caring so much about "roleplaying balance" but with the main focus to fit even more on the SW universe canon.

 

This ones are the ones I use

 

http://community.fan...-7#entry1326306

 

General, Species, Specializations, Talents, Combat, The Force, Equipment, Starships... all types are welcome

 

I know that there are some posts focused on Houserules, but I would like to focus on the "no-need to balance" ones and Canon rules.

 

Thanks and take care!

 

PS: I would like to add (if whafrog doesn't care) this awesome Force Move canon version too http://community.fan...-canon-edition/

[r2trooper 1,247]

I am not really sure I understand what you mean by canon house rule or a canon rule. In most RPG lingo if you mean canon to be by the book, it is usually Rules As Written (RAW) and you also have Rules As Intendend (RAI).

As most of you know, if you keep up with me here, I am not a huge fan of house rules. I find most penalize the players more than they help them, or people trying to "balance" a game that has long been in development for quite a long time, and play tested heavily before it went to print. I remember seeing threads on here from when the game was first coming out, or AoR, FaD, and people talking about what house rules they were going to implement before they even played the game... To me that is akin to taking a circuit board and just taking out resistors, transistors and capacitors in the hope of making my motherboard work better. Anyway, I digress on my feelings of it, as long as everyone at the table is having fun, that is important thing.

Now, as I have already said, I am not too big on house rules but here a couple I do like.

This one is for a small bonus that players get for great role playing, great ideas, and sheer tomfoolery. I call them panache dice, and they can give the player a a small boost to the dice pool.

https://edge-of-the-empire-6.obsidianportal.com/wikis/panache-dice

I also like the house rule that DarthGM did for starship combat. Take 3 strain as an incidental, and you can reduce damage to your ship by your ranks in Pilot and the ships Handling.

I have to talked to my players about this one, but we have not used it yet.

Cover:

1/4 Cover, can reach this as part of a standard maneuver, granting one setback die.

1/2 Cover, have to spend one maneuver to get into 1/2, granting 2 setback dice.

3/4/full Cover, have to spend one maneuver to get into 3/4, grants 3 setback dice. You can shoot from around the cover, but in order to do so it will cost 1 maneuver to get out, the action, and 1 maneuver to get back into it, this will give you the 3 setback for cover. If you are in full cover, you can not get shot, nor can you shoot back.

This is about it for me though.

Edited February 10, 2015 by R2builder

[Josep Maria 685]

Thank you so much!

 

With canon I was refering to the "close enough interpretation to movies/series and other canon sources". For example, In our games, as I added previously in another post, lightsaber have Breach X, and are capable to ingore all Soak, except from other energetic weapons, dark magik imbued weapons like Talzin sword or strange materials like Zillo Beast. The rest of Soak (even armor) is just ignored. Dooku caused a Critical (probably) to a freighter, almost made it explode, and let it fall to the ground.

 

About houserules, we create all of them between players and GM's. We argue and the result sometimes benefits players and other times went against them.

 

We prefer to add some "canon" elements, even if that mean some unbalance on the game. For example, a Stun weapon can knockdown Obi-Wan itself or Ashoka with just one shot.

 

We use to play about 8 hours every week. We use to try all aspects from the game. Social, Combat, Mechanics, Space, The Force... so, I know that there are people that plays so much more than us and probably have more experience with Edge (we started with Edge, not with Edge Beta), and we still want to change or adapt some things.

 

We don't fear to make changes, me make them assuring not to fully brake the game of course, but, if we can change something and make the game a bit more "canon", we don't care so much about unbalance things.

 

Balance is good for a videogame maybe, not necessarely for a tabletop roleplaygame. Someone like me, with my own age can be taller, stronger, faster and more clever than me... but I won't consider it "unbalanced"... their parents rolled better his/her stats XDDD

 

About rules, Panache is a funny one And the cover rules seems pretty interesting. We also use a "weird rule" for absent players. If the pilot of the group is out and it have 2 Ranks on piloting, I give the same amount of ranks as Boosts to the players to perform pilot checks instead use it as NPC XD (unless the char is trully requires of course).

[Yepesnopes 636]

In my games Wookies start with Brawn 4 and I reduced their Presence to 1.

But as well I use the house rule that soak is not based on brawn. It is 2+ armour + talents.

Edited February 10, 2015 by Yepesnopes

[Tyrotron 72]

I made thermal detonators much more lethal. I remember in Episode VI, when Leia is disguised as a bounty hunter and pulls out a thermal detonator, everyone in Jabba's court freaks out. I like to imagine that she could have blown up the entire chamber. Since thermal detonators are so expensive and hard to come by in my games, they are not to be trifled with. The PCs in my group use them to take out entire floors of buildings. Usually, if you are caught within close range of the blast, you are dead. If you are within medium range, then I roll for damage normally. If you are far from the blast, you usually experience strain. I like to make things hard for my players. 

[Daeglan 5,950]

I made thermal detonators much more lethal. I remember in Episode VI, when Leia is disguised as a bounty hunter and pulls out a thermal detonator, everyone in Jabba's court freaks out. I like to imagine that she could have blown up the entire chamber. Since thermal detonators are so expensive and hard to come by in my games, they are not to be trifled with. The PCs in my group use them to take out entire floors of buildings. Usually, if you are caught within close range of the blast, you are dead. If you are within medium range, then I roll for damage normally. If you are far from the blast, you usually experience strain. I like to make things hard for my players.

They already do that. They do vehicle scale damage out to short range. Which would pretty much take out the whole room.

[Josep Maria 685]

Yepesnopes, dis you made any compensation like exchange some Thoughtened talents by Endurance or you just removed the Brawn to Soak?

 

About Detonators, they have Breach right? Maybe it's enough damage to kill almost anyone on that room. Maybe I'm wrong? As extra effect, they upgrade your Coercion checks XD

Edited February 10, 2015 by Josep Maria

[Yepesnopes 636]

Yepesnopes, dis you made any compensation like exchange some Thoughtened talents by Endurance or you just removed the Brawn to Soak?

I only remove Brawn from soak.

It has the advantage (for me as a GM) that I don't have to scale up the weaponry of the NPCs as the PCs grow with xp, which helps me keep a more coherent world. PCs with 500Xp are still as concerned from a Blaster Pistol as they are when they have 0 xp, which I think it makes sense for the setting we play in. It will be anticlimactic to see in the movies that one of the heroes runs against the imperial troops unconcerned because they wield only holdout blasters, right?

Edited February 10, 2015 by Yepesnopes

[Maelora 5,807]

I pretty much disallow armour for the same reasons; it keeps most players relatively honest.   

 

Otherwise, I try to stay as close to the RAW as possible in most ways.   Most of what I throw out are the 'fiddly' things like tracking Obligation, or the elements that don't thematically suit our game like tracking Morality. 

 

I'd also probably be happy limiting Move to Sil 4.  That's quite powerful as it is.   

[bradknowles 4,449]

I only remove Brawn from soak.

It has the advantage (for me as a GM) that I don't have to scale up the weaponry of the NPCs as the PCs grow with xp, which helps me keep a more coherent world. PCs with 500Xp are still as concerned from a Blaster Pistol as they are when they have 0 xp, which I think it makes sense for the setting we play in. It will be anticlimactic to see in the movies that one of the heroes runs against the imperial troops unconcerned because they wield only holdout blasters, right?

If we’re talking about a one-on-one type situation, such as in the Cantina where Ponda Baba was aiming a blaster at Luke, then my Wookiee with WT 27 would not be concerned about the amount of damage that blaster might be able to do. He’d still let Ponda Baba fire, and then my Wookiee would proceed to rip him limb-from-limb.

High Soak is not the only thing to be concerned about, when it comes to taking a cavalier attitude towards holdout blasters, or whatever.

[bradknowles 4,449]

They already do that. They do vehicle scale damage out to short range. Which would pretty much take out the whole room.

Breach 2, twenty points of damage. My Wookiee is still standing — and royally pissed off at the guy who popped the TD. If he doesn’t have another TD that he can use to finish the job, then that guy is going to be Wookiee Pudu.