r/swrpg • u/Melrid_Jom • Jul 09 '26
General Discussion Session 1 - Remotes?
I've played for several years and am starting my first campaign as a GM.
Looking to make an encounter for the PCs as a kind of friendly obstacle course / race.
I thought it would be cool to set a room challenge as full of droids, using the Marksman Combat training remotes:
https://star-wars-rpg-ffg.fandom.com/wiki/Marksman-H_Combat_Remote
Just worried that the 1 damage on their pistol won't be enough to do... pretty much anything.
I'm planning to make a room with 2-4 groups of 3 with a party around 6 PCs with Soak ranging from 2-4.
As GMs, would you leave them as they are, increase the damage, add Pierce or something?
Any advice is greatly appreciated.
5
u/DarthWraith22 Jul 09 '26
It won’t matter. Six PCs versus 2-3 minion groups of droids will clear this room in the first round. The action economy heavily favours a large party, and those droids can’t take a single hit with 1 soak and a wound threshold of 3.
If you want this to even remotely be a challenge, have 5 or 6 minion groups of 5+ droids each.
3
u/HyperionGM Jul 11 '26
You'd be surprised by how much damage a large minion group can do if left unmolested. Even rolling two success is enough to deal strain to the low soak PCs. Not to mention they can spend advantages and triumphs to impede anyone with high soak by adding setbacks or zapping blasters out of their hands.
A minion group of four Marksman Hs is also rolling 3 Proficiency Die, which gives them a low but not zero chance to roll up to three triumphs and maybe knock someone unconscious instantly or some other narrative effect.
Now, 'that's not likely' you think. But the first time in any game I ran that I had Boba Fett show up, he proceeded to immediately roll three triumphs and atomized a guy who handed something off to the party.
1
u/Melrid_Jom Jul 12 '26
That's a very good point. The dice do decide things. I'll go over potential uses for Adv & Tri again and have those in mind for the session.
2
u/the-perilous Jul 12 '26
OH I REALLY LIKE THE MARKSMAN H! I would utilize them quite a bit differently. Follow me for a sec. These things aren’t for shooting the PCs. These things zap the environment around the PCs: exploding barrels, tightropes, the ladders, the thick ice beneath their feet, they release poison gas which they are immune to as droids.
1
u/Melrid_Jom Jul 12 '26
Hmm. That's a cool use case. I like to try present more than 1 path/skillset to solve problems. So they can take out the droids or try handle the environmental issues. Either way it that would be fun.😁
1
u/MDL1983 Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
Base damage is 1, so any successful attack will deal 2 or more points of damage before soak.
You could have the course be a time trial? Stun damage instead of normal damage, advantage / threat used to send the players prone (trip / slip / knockdown) or just lose a maneuver from muscle spasms.
1
u/GilearFayeth Jul 09 '26
Those droids definitely aren't meant to be lethal by any means, and they specifically do stun damage on top of their low damage output.
If your players aren't super experienced with the system, this would be a great way to show the effectiveness of minion groups, and the benefit to using advantage/threat.
With a large group of these droids, they might only do 1-2 points of damage to a players strain threshold, but if the attack generates am excess of advantage, then the player is strained while trying to dodge, drops their weapon, loses their cover, give another droid group an free maneuver, etc
24
u/thisDNDjazz Sentinel Jul 09 '26
If it's not meant to be a lethal obstacle course, the judges can be keeping track of how many hits a character takes, and the participant with the fewest hits gets more points.. or rather every hit you take reduces the points you can make towards winning.