The problem with Wookies.

[Madcow]

Hey guys I am new here and got a little problem with a campaign I am running.
To give you a little back ground on the story it is set in the expanded universe about a year before Admiral Thrawn reunites the Empire. The party are sent to help bring a system recently liberated into the New Republic. To cut a long story short they end up facing an Imperial Warlord who has access to dark trooper technology and is using this technology to forcibly make people he captures fight for him.
Now the problem I am having is that I let the party had full control on the characters they built and when they created their characters one of the players created a Wookie with 6D strength. I didn’t think this would be a big deal but it soon turned out to be. I quickly found out that he almost impossible to injure, normal basters have no real effect on him and I have to fire a medium repeating blaster at him to even get above his base strength stat. He has little to no dex or dodge but he really does not need it as he just shrugs off every I throw against him. I tried going down the hand to hand combat route but most weapons have a maximum of 7D damage for physical and I stupidly let him have a blast vest at the start of the game so he is rolling 7D against physical attacks. I tried to take it the blast vest off him around the end of the first chapter of the adventure but the player threatened to leave the game if I did.
Now what I was planning on doing in the next chapter was put the party on a planet that get invaded by the Imperial Warlords forces I mentioned earlier. He uses a mixture of Normal Storm troopers Cyber Troopers and the Elite Troopers that are almost Dark Troopers but not quite as good. I was thinking of arming a lot of the baddies they are going up against blasters with underslung energy grenade launchers or plasma casters. These weapons would do 7D Energy damage. Not everyone in the encounters would be armed with them but enough that the party cannot pick the one guy off right away.

What do you guys think of this solution? I am not entirely happy with it but I can’t really think of anything else.
Can any of you guys think of any other ideas? I really can’t have a character that has no chance of dying or at least getting injured in a game.

[Ral_Brelt]

Well, out of game...if he's threatened to leave over a blast vest, he may not be worth keeping. Star Wars isn't about the gear like other systems. That said, did you explain why the vest needed remocal?, or was it just 'ditch the vest'? If it was the latter, explain your reasoning privately. Like how it can't be fun to never have the suspense of worrying about your character's chances, etc. If he still holds to it, it may be time for him to go or be noticed by the forces of this warlord.

Wookies have a rep for being tough, and the Empire has other weapons at their fingertips...maybe AT-STs that showing up and picking him out of the pack since he's walking through those nasty group troops. Walker scale weapons get like 4d extra damage against a character...that should put some sting on him. Granted he gets a dodge boost, but you said he's got nothing in dodge, so you've got a fair chance to hit him. Or you could go story base and capture someone important to him and pressure the char to act certain ways that limit his combat effectiveness. I imagine he's a combat monkey off of the limited info you've shared on player and char so far. Like he's a d20 fighter or Mmo tank in d6.

[Bobmalooga]

Well depending on how you really want to handle this, depends on the answer that you're looking for. As I see it, situations like this fall back to role playing and not roll playing. (That is character interaction as opposed to dice rolling.) I used what I like to call the 'worf rule' in my game, the biggest and baddest character is going to be singled out as a serious threat while the rest of the players are dealt with on a need to basis. My storm troopers might have 1 encounter where it's all butterflies and bubble gum before the 2nd encounter has the troopers pulling grenades and setting up e-webs. Once upon a time the players used to go through all the tech books like they were the JC Penny christmas catalog...until I started used the equipment on them too.

If he is Johnny-B.A., then give him a serious threat to write home about. Another 6d wookie in battle armor, armed with a vibrosword...a nasty bounty hunter who has come looking for his pelt, an Imperial bounty so high every time he turns around some skel is looking to put a blade in him...
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No matter where you go, there you are...

[cheshire]

Hey, welcome to the boards. Yeah, this is a reoccurring problem. We call it "the bulletproof wookiee."

You can use combined fire rules. Squads can combine their fire to increase either the accuracy or the damage of their shots by focusing on a single target. So, a squad of Stormies can increase the damage by +1 pip for each trooper firing on the Wookiee. Give him a troop of 12 troops shooting at him at once to fire for 8D damage.
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Before we take any of this too seriously, just remember that in the middle episode a little rubber puppet moves a spaceship with his mind.

[Seghast]

Need an anti-Wookiee bad guy? Trandoshan.

If the character has made a name for himself, it's not unreasonable for the Empire to turn to outside help. Most Imps may look down on bounty hunters as "scum," but these scum are typically better-equipped and more experienced than your average stormtrooper. Add to that the long-standing bad blood between Wookiees and Trandos and you have something that should give the player pause.

While Wookiees do have an edge in strength, if this particular Trando has made his career solely around hunting Wookiees down, he may have gone as far as to enhance himself with cybernetic implants or genetic modifications to be the hands down best at what he does.

Or you could have the stormtroopers focus their fire on the Wook first and bring him down. Sure, he's strong enough to shrug off most blaster bolts here and there, but if you overwhelm him with sheer volume, realistically even he will fall. This will probably have to be a role-playing bit rather than roll-playing because the dice can (and probably will) say different.

And as far as most melee weapons capping at 7d physical damage, you're the GM; it's entirely up to you if you want to honor that rule or beef the weapons up. The rules in the books aren't so much "rules" as they are guidelines to try and abide by and if they're preventing the story from advancing or you from doing what needs to be done, then it's okay to discard of modify them as needed.

[Dromdarr_Alark]

Thermal detonators. Everywhere.
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"I still wouldn't have a roll for it - but that's just how I roll."

[Dromdarr_Alark]

Or have the wookiee fight a rancor.
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"I still wouldn't have a roll for it - but that's just how I roll."

[Assuran]

Yep, nothing wrong with having a Trandoshian wielding a Great Force Pike (7D+2 damage at Max Str, before cybernetics) or Powered Sword (same) show up to deal with him. If you make it a Gamorrean (or any other 5D Str Alien Race) Bounty Hunter, the damage moves up to 8D.

Or, if you want to stay with Blasters, have a team of Imps set up and use an E-Web. 8D damage per shot will give the Wookie pause.

[garhkal]

[Zarn]

Well, matching damage for damage is simple.

Coynite - with a proper sword, you can do a lot of damage.

Barabel, Houk, Sauvax, and Noghri (off the top of my head) can go toe-to-toe with a Wookiee if they're built right.

Some organizations that could take an interest would be Black Sun (all sorts of things, for instance kidnapping for gladiator combat), ex-Shock Ball pros or talent scouts, Mystryl Shadow Guard (either directly, or perhaps because they're the bodyguard of some important NPC), or the Malkite Poisoners. Heck, even Coynites or Nagai might get interested for all sorts of reasons. And even Boba Fett has a few Wookiee scalps on his belt...

Stun grenades are great, as is heavy anti-riot weaponry. If you've got some troopers on a speeder bike, in a patrol vehicle, or what have you, you could easily get some speeder-scale or walker-scale weaponry shooting at the Wookiee. Glob grenades, Stohkli sticks and anything else that reduces movement or impairs the senses is great.

However, the problem is essentially the conflict or confrontation between you as the GM and the player. If the player's so vested in a key item that the player threatens to leave over it, that's a problem. That you could only think of that as a solution, is another.

There are many other arenas of conflict in Star Wars - combat is just one of them. Socially, a Wookiee won't be able to defend very well because not many speak Wookiee.

A 'character assassin' of sorts can put out all sorts of rumours of the dangerous and deranged Wookiee that tears you limb from limb if you look at the Wookie sideways.

A slicer (or legitimate Imperial representative) can post all sorts of bounties if this keeps going on. Put cameras out, make sure that just barrelling through Stormtroopers isn't necessarily a viable option - or at least not in the long run.

If you can't go for the character, go for the race. Make this all the character's fault. If they don't get sneaky, others may get dead.

Personally, I prefer to just give players more rope with which to do interesting things - such as making all sorts of nooses to put around their own necks figuratively speaking. If a Wookiee uses the brute force approach for everything, encourage that - but make note of, say, news about violent Wookiees, backlash against the Wookiee community (or slaves), perhaps some public executions of Wookiees as a warning to not resist or do this level of damage.

Also, Wookiees can go berserk. And, if they know that other Wookiees may be hostage to the character's good behaviour and still keep on truckin' - well, that's why a GM's best friend can be Dark Side Points.[/b]

[aegisflashfire]

Put the wookiee in situations that play against the min/maxing.

Not every situation can be resolved by brute strength. Make a Tech roll or your ship explodes. Make dex roll to avoid being stepped on by a Walker. Make a perception roll to see if you noticed that assassin slipping a poison in your food.

It also doesn't have to be a DEATH penalty sometimes it's just failure to accomplish goals. How about he wants to rescue a group of hiding orphaned Ranat. Oops. You failed the knowledge roll that would have let you know that Ranat prefer hiding upwind of ammonia sources, and down wind of the smell of rotting meat. Too bad, that key bit of information might have let you save them.

edit: put that str against him. A berserk wookiee that attacks his friends wont be happy when the party kicks him out on his butt.
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GM of Falling Star: D6 Star Wars Campaign Podcast

[cheshire]

[garhkal]

[aegisflashfire]

kills the guy you were supposed to capture then.
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[DougRed4]

First off, welcome to the Rancor Pit, Zarn and Madcow!

I realized this problem in my group rather quickly, though in my case it was due to a high STR Barabel, rather than a Wookiee. Lots of good advice here, but one simple solution I came up with is to use a new concept called Dazed. It ends up giving some penalty for being hit, while still allowing the Wookiee to be tough enough to shrug off most damage.

Dazed Characters
Characters who are hit in combat, but who succeed on their Strength roll to resist damage, are considered to be dazed. A dazed character suffers a penalty of 1D to skill and attribute rolls for the rest of that round. A character hit multiple times in this fashion can be dazed twice (or more), but they are not 'affected' beyond that. Being dazed does not count as being stunned, but it is cumulative with stunned results. It also does not apply to Brawling attacks where the defender's Strength is double that of the attacker.


You can read a whole thread about it here.
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green