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Topic:
How powerful are the Stormtroopers/Imperial Army/Navy Troopers in your game?
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Blithe
Registered:
Jun '03
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Date Posted:
1/12 10:37am
Subject:
How powerful are the Stormtroopers/Imperial Army/Navy Troopers in your game?
- Date Edited:
1/12 10:42am (3 edits total)
Edited By:
Blithe
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Each system has addressed Stormtroopers slightly differently.
- Stormtroopers(in WEG) are certainly a cut above the average; however, despite being called the elites of the New Order, these guys are pretty much on par with your average Imperial Army trooper; in d20, there a varying levels for Stormtroopers, making them more of a challenge, potentially, for high-level PCs.
- Imperial Army Troopers; while not the shock troops of the Empire, these guys have a fairly well-rounded skillset in the WEG sourcebooks for non-heroics and are about even in combat prowess with the stormtroops; I don't honestly remember ever seeing the Army in d20 stuff. What about anyone else?
- Navy Troopers; these guys are jokes, yet accurately depicted based on their training to preform only the most basic grunt functions - hangar security, cell security, munitions guards, etc.; d20 Navy guys have just a few Thug levels as I recall, like stormtroopers, but not as many.
- Death Star Troopers; supposed to be better than the average Stormtrooper or Army conscript, trained in many forms of combat, and quite deadly with a blaster, and WEG depicts this quite well in their game stats; Death Star Troopers in d20 are scary, too, shown as level 4 Soldiers in the Rebellion Era Sourcebook!
So GM out there - how do you handle these NPCs? Do you like to have your Stormtroopers with some heroic levels to reinforce the feel of "elite"? (I've heard of some GMs statting their Stormies around 3-5th level!) What about the Army and Navy, or even the Death Star Troopers? For the purposes of challenging the part, how do you typically use them? Has anyone ever done anything unique and given Stormtroopers/Army/Navy a Force Point or some other kind of ace in their sleeve to use against the PCs? Do you have a particular group that is more often than not known as the canon fodder? Do you even bother to remember the other branches, since the Stormtroopers outnumber both the Navy and the Army, and chose to use the more recognizable Stormtrooper?
Personally, I think the d20 Stormtrooper stat blocks work fine. Occasionally, I like to give a Stormy Sergant a level of Solider or Noble or something, but nothing too drastic. I'd never really paid much attention to them before, probably either confusing them with the Navy Troopers or simply assuming them to be weak security guards, but apparently, the Death Star Troopers are the ones that are the best of the best. I really need to start using them somehow in my game.
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Koohii
Title: Games: RPG d6 GM
Registered:
May '03
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Date Posted:
1/13 12:09pm
Subject:
RE: How powerful are the Stormtroopers/Imperial Army/Navy Troopers in your game?
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Well, the Imperial Sourcebook by WEG had lots of specialized troopers--Stormtroopers, Snowtroopers, Shadowtroopers, 0-G troopers, Aqua-troopers, etc.
Now, as for upping the challenge: troopers get tougher as they get closer to bad guys. The troops on the remote outposts get the stats provided in the stock book. The one's guarding the bosses get a couple extra D of blaster and dodge, and maybe a skillpoint or two. Elite troopers get up to 6 or 7 D of both, 5D in command and some other skill (Vehicle piloting, gunnery, computers, Tactics, etc) and anywhere from 3 skill point to a forcepoint.
So that's how I dealt with it.
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Thomas-C
Registered:
Aug '07
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Date Posted:
1/14 9:37pm
Subject:
RE: How powerful are the Stormtroopers/Imperial Army/Navy Troopers in your game?
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I've rarely made posts before but I thought I would chime in on this one. I have always thought that the SW Stormtroopers were named after the Nazi Stormtroopers. These "troops" were not known any superior fighting ability so much as their fanatical devotion to the cause. As the latest SW RPG Saga rulebook says on P. 278 "[Stormtroopers]...are obedient and devoted the Emperor. They cannot be bribed, blackmailed, or seduced..." To place this in more in our world, if a soldier was ordered to kill a whole family in cold blood, he may still do it (depending on the soldier) but he would not like it and may resist the order. A Stormtrooper on the other hand may follow the order without question or hesitation and may feel they are doing a good thing. Put another way, if the Emperor orders your world's population slaughtered, no amount of begging or sights of crying orhpans would stop them. These are not a pretty examples but I'm just trying to explain the difference.
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Koohii
Title: Games: RPG d6 GM
Registered:
May '03
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Date Posted:
1/15 9:43am
Subject:
RE: How powerful are the Stormtroopers/Imperial Army/Navy Troopers in your game?
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That was pretty much the only reason I could see for people being affraid of the TPM battle droids. A good swift kick will break one in half. Their aim is only mediocre. But they have no conscience to appeal to and will methodically kill. Plus they come in numbers.
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Jedi Merkurian
Title: Games: RPG d20 GM
Registered:
May '00
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Date Posted:
1/15 11:08am
Subject:
RE: How powerful are the Stormtroopers/Imperial Army/Navy Troopers in your game?
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In Saga Rules, combined fire can be a mother. Also, stat-wise, stormies have it all over generic Rebel troopers.
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dp4m
Registered:
Nov '01
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Date Posted:
1/15 12:33pm
Subject:
RE: How powerful are the Stormtroopers/Imperial Army/Navy Troopers in your game?
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Jedi Merkurian posted:
In Saga Rules, combined fire can be a mother. Also, stat-wise, stormies have it all over generic Rebel troopers.
Hell, in RCRB rules a squad could fire as a battery and destroy things...
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Koohii
Title: Games: RPG d6 GM
Registered:
May '03
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Date Posted:
1/15 4:59pm
Subject:
RE: How powerful are the Stormtroopers/Imperial Army/Navy Troopers in your game?
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Stormtroopers: Fanatically loyal and driven shock troops
Rebel soldiers: ordinary people who have decided to abandon the safety of conformity and risk their lives to promote ideals. They've trained themselves to be capable combattants.
Would you pit National Guard against Navy Seals or Mossad?
Oh, if I'm feeling really obnoxious, I'll put a sergeant (4D command) in with the squad of stormies so that they can coordinate fire on one member of the party at a time.
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inkpenavenger
Registered:
Sep '05
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Date Posted:
7/12 4:28pm
Subject:
RE: How powerful are the Stormtroopers/Imperial Army/Navy Troopers in your game?
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I'm actually incorporating some D&D 4E concepts into my Saga Edition campaign.
Normally, stormtroopers and other low-level enemies can't hit PCs after a certain point unless they roll a nat 20. Also, the enemies' defenses and hp are so low that the PCs almost always kill them with one hit...almost. It's a real pain when one or two stormtroopers have 2hp because the 3d8 blaster rifle rolled low damage and you have to keep track of that.
The concept of the 4E "minion" is to have an enemy that poses a minor threat to the PCs while only usually needing one action on the part of a PC to dispose of it. So a minion's attack bonuses and defenses are comparable to enemies that are on par with the PCs, while only having 1 hit point and a static damage ammount.
So a stormtrooper minion used against a party of 14th level PCs would have comparable attacks and defenses to a CL 14 enemy, but would only ever deal 12 points of damage on a hit (average for a blaster rifle) and would only take one hit to kill it.
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FlareStorm
Registered:
Nov '00
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Date Posted:
7/13 5:05pm
Subject:
RE: How powerful are the Stormtroopers/Imperial Army/Navy Troopers in your game?
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To make stormtroopers tougher, in d6 I just added more troops and made them use combined fire because that was easy.
d20 I had a table for troopers with differing levels, never more than +1 or +2.
In both I often used the "get them before he raises the alarm" shtick to make it more challenging for higher levels.
As an aside, I never used the "Stormtroopers can never be bluffed/seduced/etc" as written. Only came up once or twice, but it is just totally unrealistic to me.
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