How Do You Handle Mechanically Silly Species

[shootingwomprats]

I just had a player approach me and ask if he could play a Sluissi. Now I did not remember the Sluissi other than by name. So I told him to wait and let me check it out.

Imagine my surprise as a GM when I read the species and it gets:

1. +4D at the beginning of character creation to spend on Technical skills.
2. the 2D cap is removed for beginning character creation in Technical skills and is now 4D.

The downside?
1. Whenever using a technical skill it takes them twice as long to perform.

For attributed? The racial max for technical is 5D.

This is completely open to abuse. The character could make a Tech 5D, toss in another 4D into a skill, another 1D to specialize and have a a tech skill(s) of 10 as a beginning character! Furthermore all his technical skills would default to 5D!

Now I know that someone out there is going to say, "yeah but they will be a one trick pony, just do your adventure in such a way that they get hammered in their weak areas." That is not really an effective strategy.

Any suggestions? I am thinking of a home rule that starting skills can be no higher than 5D+2, 6D+2 if specialized, and no skill due to special circumstances higher than 7D+2.
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[thedemonapostle]

ive played characters that were that one sided before. it was fun when i was using my skills in my field of expertise. but the moment i was out of my area of expertise i was bored and angry.

let them play the character as is. rarely do players have the extensive time and patience to let a sluissi fix something. they make great NPCs but lousy player characters.

"Relaxed: Sluissi, in general, are a very calm bunch. Nothing excites them. Their patience and seeming inability to get genuinely upset or excited sometimes infuriates other species." -that might be kinda hard for a player to role play.
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[Quetzacotl]

Ah well, what I found out is that the races in SW D6 are completely unbalanced. They don't seem to follow any guidelines and are just random which leads to such species as those sluissi.

My advice:
Talk to the player. He should play the race because of the race, meaning the culture and the phsyical implications of such a race, and not because of the unbalanced special rules and so on.
Limit the possibilities or simply scap those two special rules and everything is fine.

So a 5D in Technical is not that problematic. Humans have 4D max, so 5D is not that much off, so I don't really see the problem here, he will miss the attribute die in the other attributes... maybe, depending on you

[cheshire]

Yeah, I had a character try to do something similar with a Verpine. They had the mindset of, "I'm going to be super-awesome at tech!" But here's the problem of being super awesome at something while living in a galaxy ruled by an Imperial bureaucracy that gives exactly zero thought to human rights... and then top that with the fact that they give even less thought to alien rights.

If you're too good, somebody wants you. Draw too much attention to yourself by being super awesome the Empire is likely to require your services.

There are also the role playing responsibilities. Ask the player why they really want to play this character. Ask them what kind of character they're really interested in bringing to the table. If the personality can't match the description (and if you look in the Thrawn Trilogy Sourcebook, there's quite a description), then there's something really wrong.

Some things are really broken, but have a story balance, and some things are just really really broken. I tend to discourage a broken beginning character. Other times I'm willing to let it slide if they're willing to make some narrative exchanges. That is to say, make story complications that they will have to sort out in the process of the adventures. Nothing is ever for free in my games.
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[Kytross]

Heh, Sluissi are some of my most favorite species, precisely because they are so broken. They taught me a great deal about the game. There's a number of species that abuse the technical skill, but there's only one species that abuses mechanical (Duros) and it's not nearly as bad as how Sluissi or Verpine or even Jawas abuse technical. All it really means is they won't be failing repair rolls, which has less of an effect on gameplay than it sounds.

1st off, yes, you've got this right. 10D in two technical skills is possible with a Sluissi. Or 11 technical skills at 6D. (Jawas can start with 3 technical skills at 8D+2 if you do it right)

2) Any skill that your player takes twice as long to perform you should give your player the extra die for taking an extra round. Not everyone agree with me on this, but Sluissi consider technology the highest art and will not be rushed so they will always do a great job, which in game rules spells out to +1D. I'm also about to give you the reason technical superiority is controlled by the GM, go ahead and give them the extra point.

3) More than every other attribute technical is controlled by the GM. Without the resources to fix something you can't fix it. With Dex I can always dodge, with strength you can always brawl, and with perception you can always con, sneak, bargain, hide and generally abuse the hell out of any situation. (Perception is the most abuse-able attribute in my experience.)

Technical requires you to have the right parts available to make the fix, or the improvement. Or enough cash to buy the parts to make the fix.

Who controls how much cash the player has? The GM.

Who controls what shops are available and what items are in the shop? The GM.

As far as repair rolls go you can only improve something one pip at a time. Additionally there is a general cap on improvements of +1D+1 (I think. It might be +2D)

4) FYI, players need (A) Engineering to create a new design. If they don't have it the technical rolls go up drastically in difficulty.

5) Technical skills don't immediately effect combat. Most technical roles take at least 15 minutes to perform.

6) Let your character have fun. It's a game. If he wants to be the greatest starship mechanic in the galaxy then work it into the game and down the road have him do a fix on a crime boss's ship. The Crime boss is so impressed he wants the Sluissi to work for him and won't take no for an answer. Or some variation on the theme. See Cheshire's comment

[Kytross]

Also, Sluissi have a dex max of 2D. He's going to want to spend a few of those starting dice on dodge...

Also, is this a starting player or an experienced one? It changes how I'd respond as a GM.

[garhkal]

[Kytross]

[garhkal]

A lot depends on whether the DM can keep the group poor without making it obvious he is out to get them in that way..
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[Kytross]

True enough. My GMs and myself often don't have a problem keeping a group poor, or rather, putting them in situations where they can't access their funds.

In Smuggling campaigns keeping the costs of the operation in mind generally keeps the profits low. Docking fees, fuel costs, ships registrations, running an independent shipping business is not a particularly profitable idea unless you have a bulk freighter to offset the costs with volume. Smuggling is practically necessary if you're flying in a light freighter. If your players are doing really well then have them finally get caught by a customs agent who can hit them with ridiculous fines or a huge bribe they have to pay off. Or they spend all their credits to buy their own cargo, and when they make the delivery CorSec shows up in force and takes them down. They confiscate your players' cargo, and there goes the cash flow. (Story line wise I would then have CorSec try and flip them on their supplier. "You're just a little fish. We're willing to throw you back into the water if you're willing to tell us what you know about Ralph the Hutt.")

In Pirate/Privateer campaigns give the players alot of money, and a chance to revel in their fortunes, for a month or two. As they become more successful the bounties rise and so does their standing on the Empire's Most Wanted list. Now the Galaxy Rangers are making sting operations to catch them and CorSec is after them too. Compnore, the ISB and other Imperial agencies will be seeking them out. If they've been hitting Imperial shipping then the Imperial Fleet will be after them with overwhelming force. Now they're too busy running to make money, or patrols of their area have increased so high that it's getting harder and harder to find prizes & booty.

In a military campaign you never have any money anyway. Just ask any soldier. You do get to play with some nice toys though.

Jedi take a vow of poverty of some sort.

[atgxtg]

Generally we don't have too much trouble with the "silly" species. In almost every case the species with an overpowering bonus in some area pay for it by being weak in several other areas.

The Slussi character we had were never a problem for me to GM. They had a lot of weak spots that could be used to make things challenging for them, and I'd often have them working against some sort of deadline when doing tech stuff, so their trait of taking extra time would drive the other PCs crazy.

If a GM thinks a given species is too unbalancing he doesn't have to allow it as a player character. WEG did that with a few species, such as Star Dragons.

Currently, I'm playing a Gen'Dai, one of the more unbalancing species. He is capable of soaking tremendous amounts of damage, but I'm still the weakest combatant in the group- unless I'm in a Starfighter, then my 8D in Laser Cannon kicks in. Of course the only reason why I think I the GM allowed me to play a Gen'Dai was because I had an interesting character concept : a Gen'Dai kid.

[Captain Xenon]

huh. so you have a snake-man from the outer rim, who can start with 4D in engineering(A), with a specialization.

first problem here, is that he cant wear pants. that means he needs a special space suit if he wants to repair the outside of the hull in space. also a lot of difficult terrain can make life interesting for him.

i dont see a problem, however he really need to get at least 3D knowledge, +1D of language, and a specialty in both galactic standard and Sy Bissel (standard trade language of the outer rim).

the fact that this species is from a new republic era book may imply that they dont show up much before that era. so if your earlier in the timeline he may be the only of his people in imperial space- which means he will stick out like a sore thumb, and nobody will know his native language. even the protocol droids may take some time to translate everything.

for story hook, he could have been working at a port on a major outer rim world, like Taris, before trouble with imperials resulted in him joining the PC group and whatever story you have planned.

[Kytross]

Sluissi developed hyperdrive shortly after the humans and duros and used it to colonize their own sector of space. When they were discovered in the early days of the old Republic they willingly joined. They were created in 1991 by Timothy Zahn.

Extrapolating from that data, the Sluis sector is probably the most urbane and civilized part of the outer rim. They have governed themselves and their sector for nearly 10,000 years, until the clone wars and Palpatine's political manipulations.

And yes, they have their own space suits.

Lastly, if I remember correctly, (A) Engineering is a knowledge skill. They can start with (A) Medicine at 4D.

[shootingwomprats]

Guys you are getting it wrong. At character creation they get +4D to be spent on Mechanic skills AND the 2D cap is 4D. They race can have a Mechanical skill of 4D. The only downside is that it takes x2 as long to perform Mechanical skills.

I would change the +4D to "at character creation, for every 1D in spent on Mechanical skills, the character receives 2D" with the 2D cap still in place.

I recently had a player ask to play this race but he did not want the time constraint. So I told him he doesn't get the +4D bonus to Mechanical skills. He quickly changed his character idea after that.

Then he wanted to play an Antarian ranger. When I told him during the Rebellion era the rangers were hunted down as viciously as the Jedi, but would allow it if he could give me a good character concept beyond, "Hey I have this special ranger rifle that shoots at to medium range as though it were Short and Medium range at what others have as Long." He chose not to play that character either.

Yeah I have not played with this group yet, but I am already having to get on these guys about OP, game balance and character concept.
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The D6 Podcast
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[garhkal]

Good on you for standing your ground.
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