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Lifting skill (stormtrooper strength)
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TauntaunScout
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 28, 2017 8:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The disparities are probably just from the editorial mistakes that happened as sourcebooks were published and as the editions moved along. Things got lost between the file folders, I'd imagine.

But maybe the plates of sand or snow armor are thinner to make up for the weight of extra survival gear and such. If you look close at snow armor it would appear to have fewer limb plates.

In regards to overall strength, again I say, average is average. Most people going to be below average in several things, to make up for what they're good at. Office workers in SW would likely be below 2D STR. Try making up some Star Wars civilians. Take their job and give them 3D in the related attribute. Give them 3D in the attribute that governs their most passionate interest. If they are the same attribute, give it 4D. Now they are down to 1D in a full third of their attributes.

I never really liked the classification of stormtrooper armor as "crappy". In the real world, if armor means you go to the hospital instead of the morgue, or the first aid station instead of the hospital, you would be ecstatically happy with it's performance. People seem to think armor that doesn't turn you into superman is/was/would be a waste of encumbrance, and it isn't/wasn't/wouldn't be. If it saves your life or means you get stitches instead of an amputation, it's good armor.
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 28, 2017 11:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sutehp wrote:

Or we can come to the conclusion that regular stormtroopers are that accurate against everyone except the main characters because they're always spending Force points or Character Points to avoid getting hit. Stormtroopers mow down Rebel redshirts by the dozens in the opening scene of ANH and (though this was offscreen) the snowtroopers didn't have much trouble getting into Echo Base and mowing down whatever Rebels were still left.


That's how i see it. BUT with 5d blaster (reduced to 4d after armor penalty) vs 4d of the standard 'trooper' dodge, they are even stevens on whether they hit or not... UNLESS they are used to their armor so don't suffer that -1d...

Ninja-Bear wrote:
Sutehp I can agree that the Heroes.have plot immunity.


Heroes in the FILMS, yes. Heroes in the game. Hellzz no.

Quote:
I never really liked the classification of stormtrooper armor as "crappy".


Neither do i. Which is why the book listed stats are for 'greenhorns' fresh out of the academy. Skilled troops, veterans etc are much higher..
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Whill
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 29, 2017 1:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sutehp wrote:
Or we can come to the conclusion that regular stormtroopers are that accurate against everyone except the main characters because they're always spending Force points or Character Points to avoid getting hit. Stormtroopers mow down Rebel redshirts by the dozens in the opening scene of ANH

That wasn't such a one-sided battle. Plenty of stormtroopers got taken out too. But the stormtroopers kept coming and the Rebels sacrificed themselves just to give the Princess more time.

Sutehp wrote:
and (though this was offscreen) the snowtroopers didn't have much trouble getting into Echo Base and mowing down whatever Rebels were still left.

The Empire gains a lot of ground through numerical superiority of largely expendable soldiers. Since it was offscreen, we don't know how many snowtroopers got taken out in the fight to get into to Echo Base. Again the rebel soldiers were just buying time for the most important Rebel assets to escape, many soldiers sacrificing themselves for the cause in a totally unwinnable battle.

TauntaunScout wrote:
The disparities are probably just from the editorial mistakes that happened as sourcebooks were published and as the editions moved along. Things got lost between the file folders, I'd imagine.

If you're speaking of stats, there weren't any editorial "mistakes" because there was no overall stat editor, which is why stats from various authors are wildly inconsistent.

TauntaunScout wrote:
But maybe the plates of sand or snow armor are thinner to make up for the weight of extra survival gear and such. If you look close at snow armor it would appear to have fewer limb plates.
...
I never really liked the classification of stormtrooper armor as "crappy". In the real world, if armor means you go to the hospital instead of the morgue, or the first aid station instead of the hospital, you would be ecstatically happy with it's performance. People seem to think armor that doesn't turn you into superman is/was/would be a waste of encumbrance, and it isn't/wasn't/wouldn't be. If it saves your life or means you get stitches instead of an amputation, it's good armor.

Maybe some of those hits we see on stormtroopers in the films are just incapacitations and the armor saved their lives. But we hardly see anyone in the classic films take blaster bolt hits and remaining conscious, with or without armor. So the armor in the films doesn't seem to downgrade incapacitated into only wounded.

garhkal wrote:
Neither do i. Which is why the book listed stats are for 'greenhorns' fresh out of the academy. Skilled troops, veterans etc are much higher.

I wholeheartedly agree with this. In my game I have always had stormtroopers of various calibers. Over the course of a campaign as the PCs get more powerful, the veteran stormtrooper appearances become more frequent, but the rookies are always here and there.
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Sutehp
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 29, 2017 3:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Given that the armor stats are wildly inconsistent, is there a document or fanbook already in existence, or will be planned in the future that will address these stormtrooper armor inconsistencies? Having everything in the same place would be monumentally useful.
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 29, 2017 3:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

There's quiet a few spots where all the storm trooper stats can be seen... Gry's Equipment handbook is one, Rules of engagement is another.
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Sutehp
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 29, 2017 6:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Which I already have, gar, but that's not what I was asking. I was hoping for a fanbook on stormtroopers (or at least trooper armor) that reworked the armor stats and made them more consistent with each other, not an already published compilation with inconsistent stats. It was in Gry's Equipment PDF that I first noticed these inconsistencies.

Damn it all, WEG's lack of an overall editor to keep the stats consistent with each other is really shining through here. Not that I'm one to talk, as I haven't even read through all the rules yet, but one would expect a professional gaming company to at least have an editor familiar with their system to make all the stats consistent or at least have guidelines that all the disparate authors could follow. I guess WEG couldn't obtain that for some reason...?

But I'm wondering if there's any future Rancor Pit project that will address the inconsistencies in stormtrooper armor and fix them. I'm not familiar enough with the system to do it myself, at least not yet.
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TauntaunScout
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 29, 2017 8:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

"Incapacitated" is in now way conflicting with the shot stormtroopers on screen being unconscious. Downgrading to wounded or not is irrelevant to whether it made the difference between life and death. In game terms it matters whether a PC is wounded or incapacitated but doesn't mean much in the movies for supernumeraries.

I honestly think the -1D penalty to DEX is unrealistic. It seems more based on myths about the encumbrance of armor, and a way to explain the innacuracy of stormtrooper blaster fire in the movies. If I wrote the game from the ground up, the only disadvantage I would give for plastic armor is for things like Stamina and maybe a small movement penalty. But, -1D DEX it is, and I can live with it because it's far from the biggest suspension of disbelief in Star Wars.

As for the dodge thing: In the miniatures game, only heroes can dodge, not ordinary troops. So in the WEG D6 universe of large scale troop actions, the rebel soldiers on Hoth or the Tantive IV wouldn't be dodging at all, and the stormtrooper's accuracy would go back up.
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Telsij
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 09, 2017 1:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

With civilian non-heroic extras and several "typical" human types getting a few attributes below 2D, I too have always taken the 2D human species minimum as minimum for a hero PC / villain / major NPC character only -- with the notion in mind that, as Whill and others have already mentioned, there really was no stat editor at WEG per se, thus the lack of consistency for many, many things.

And while it's not letter of the RAW, it is spirit of it, since red-shirts and average joe human have a few 1D+1's to their name. Corporal Kelsome from the ESB GG is the only example I can think of off the top of my head, who was a "named" background character that had a couple of attributes below 2D, IIRC. So: the stormtrooper is stronger than your average joe due to his rigorous training, but is only about the minimum strength of an average PC.
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Ninja-Bear
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 13, 2018 7:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sutehp wrote:
Given that the armor stats are wildly inconsistent, is there a document or fanbook already in existence, or will be planned in the future that will address these stormtrooper armor inconsistencies? Having everything in the same place would be monumentally useful.


Armor stats I can live with. Have you seen the character stats for Imperial Army/Navy Troopers? They are higher than Storm Troopers. STR 2D+2 for Navy and 3D for Army iirc.

Was also thinking of just dropping all Storm Trooper armor stats to Scout armor. The difference between standard and scout armor then would be that scout doesn’t incur the Dex penalty and Standard does.
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Whill
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 14, 2018 1:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Funny you brought this thread back, Ninja. I was thinking about this recently.

My standard stormtroopers have Strength 2D+1 and raised Lifting and Stamina. Based on the utter lack of film evidence of stormtrooper armor providing any protection against blaster bolts, I've decided to just make stormtrooper armor only give a +1 pip bonus to resist energy damage. I'll probably do that for all types of troopers (Maybe it is just that black rubbery under garment that actually provides the energy protection, and the white plastoid armor provides the physical protection). The physical damage protection and Dex penalty can still vary per armor type accordingly. (Phasma's chrome armor gives a higher energy damage protection.)
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 7:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I noticed that on Holocron D6, there are Thrawn Trilogy game book has higher statted Stormtroopers. In the interim till I figure out what I’m going to do in my game, I’ll Use them.
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 9:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I’m curious Whill want do you do then to the Imeprieal Army/Navy state? Ignore and change them? Accept them as is? I also thought about changing heir stats to typical security guards.

One thing to consider is that in D6 Space they suggest a mook rule. Where a nice. Important character that takes any damage that they cannot fully soak, is out that hit. On a side note, I also considered giving Stormtroopers such merging to this effect. They can be stronger with original armor stat but in story factor r, they are stated as only rolling say 2D to resist.
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 16, 2018 2:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ninja-Bear wrote:
I’m curious Whill want do you do then to the Imeprieal Army/Navy state? Ignore and change them? Accept them as is? I also thought about changing heir stats to typical security guards.

I don't accept many stats as-is. I'm always adjusting stats as I see fit. I haven't really thought about army/navy stats. I've mainly just been puzzling out stormtrooper strength and armor stats so that my damage/wound system jives with the films.

Ninja-Bear wrote:
One thing to consider is that in D6 Space they suggest a mook rule. Where a nice. Important character that takes any damage that they cannot fully soak, is out that hit. On a side note, I also considered giving Stormtroopers such merging to this effect. They can be stronger with original armor stat but in story factor r, they are stated as only rolling say 2D to resist.

I do have a separate damage/wound track for unimportant PCs, detailed in the post linked below:

http://www.rancorpit.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=161842#161842
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Naaman
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 16, 2018 4:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ninja-Bear wrote:
MrNexx wrote:
Sounds reasonable enough. Why do you think Stormtroopers should be stronger, though?


Its saying that they are trained and.2D is just human average. Im not saying rhese guys are super muscular.bit I feel they should be alittle.stronger than joe average.


A little late to the party, but what's even worse is that 2D is not only average Joe, but it's human MINIMUM by RAW.

By contrast, the US Army has a standard that lines up with some scientific thing that was done decades ago that puts the weakest soldier to pass his physical fitness test in the top 10% of human beings in regard to physical fitness.


In other words, theoretically, 90% of untrained should fail an Army PT test (I'm not sure how accurate the original data is, but I offer this as a point of reference).


Now, I look at imperial philosophy a bit differently, though. The empire emphasizes quantity over quality.

So, while 3D in a skill might indicate a "trained" person (probably a good baseline for a typical soldier), I'd say that imperial troops have a lower threshold of quality since they are generally regarded as disposable anyway. So perhaps 2D+1 or 2D+2, as has already been suggested. Consider this post a +1 for the idea.

TauntaunScout wrote:
"Incapacitated" is in now way conflicting with the shot stormtroopers on screen being unconscious. Downgrading to wounded or not is irrelevant to whether it made the difference between life and death. In game terms it matters whether a PC is wounded or incapacitated but doesn't mean much in the movies for supernumeraries.

I honestly think the -1D penalty to DEX is unrealistic. It seems more based on myths about the encumbrance of armor, and a way to explain the innacuracy of stormtrooper blaster fire in the movies. If I wrote the game from the ground up, the only disadvantage I would give for plastic armor is for things like Stamina and maybe a small movement penalty. But, -1D DEX it is, and I can live with it because it's far from the biggest suspension of disbelief in Star Wars.

As for the dodge thing: In the miniatures game, only heroes can dodge, not ordinary troops. So in the WEG D6 universe of large scale troop actions, the rebel soldiers on Hoth or the Tantive IV wouldn't be dodging at all, and the stormtrooper's accuracy would go back up.


I agree. My solution (which has yet to be playtested) is to impose the -1D penalty to the dodge roll only. Half an hour of training and the armor is of no hindrance to firing a blaster or throwing a grenade or whatever. But it would slow you down some, so I could get behind a move penalty as well.


Last edited by Naaman on Fri Feb 16, 2018 4:39 am; edited 1 time in total
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Ninja-Bear
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 16, 2018 6:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well I’m my rant of stats, the one I forgot to mention but the most aggrievous in my opinion is that Rebel soldiers have I think a 3D STR!

Another concept I’m kicking around in my head is that STR is only half value (round up) but Armor adds normally. Originally I was just thinking versus energy but perhaps also against sharp “killing” like swords or claws too.
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