I like option 3 for damaging with threat, I’d also give it Unwieldy 3. Tax that melee PC with some XP 
Fire Suppression Droid (EotE SoF):
Priced at 8,000, which is incredibly high for what it does, especially when compared to its contemporaries (similar to the situation with the Maintenance Droid).
Fix: Decrease the cost of the Fire Suppression Droid to 600.
1 Like
Amplifying Chamber attachment is the only Blast attachment that doesn’t shorten the range of the weapon. Shouldn’t it?
And it’s the only one with 5 +1 Blast Mods, on top of its base 4. So why use any of the other Blast attachments??
Good mark! I think I might have noted something on it in my sheet, but regardless, I will examine it and its contemporaries and get back to you soon.
In the spreadsheet, I recommend simply deleting it from the game. The other two attachments do their jobs well, and are far more balanced.
HOWEVER, you requested a fix and so I will provide a fix.
Base Modifiers: “As a Maneuver, the character may charge the weapon to expend all of its ammunition in a single unstable shot. When charged in this way, the weapon gains the Blast 5, Inaccurate +1, and Limited Ammo 1 qualities.”
Modification Options: 5 Item Quality (Blast +1) mods, 1 Item Quality (Inaccurate -1) mod.
I think that’s acceptable at the price (350) and HP requirements (1), what do you think? It differentiates it from the other “shotgun” attachments and balances it (in comparison) by situationality, trading consistency for price and convenience (HP requirement).
I like it.
Do the other Blast attachments cost more than 1 HP? I didn’t notice.
3 for one, 2 for the other.
Wow, that’s a significant difference, then.
I like the option to keep it around for those players that want the Blast 9 occasionally. They’ll likely have to carry a spare power pack with it.
Due to difficulty increases, you won’t actually be able to get up to Blast 9 outside of very rare circumstances.
The main balancing difficulty with “shotguns” is that they are essentially multi-use grenades. I took the approach of making it single-use as a counter to that.
Speaking of multi-use grenades, has anyone worked up a good solution for the encumbrance issue with multiple shot grenade launchers?
Reloading them with individual grenades takes up so much encumbrance that you’re pretty much always better off carrying a another loaded launcher rather than a reload, which is just silly.
Reloads should be heavy and cumbersome, sure, but less so than a second weapon.
The CSPL-12 is enc 2, but a full reload of 3 grenades is enc 3
The RGL-318 is enc 5, but a full reload of 3 grenades is enc 6
The underbarrel launcher is enc 2, but a full reload of up to 6 grenades can be enc 6
Possible solutions:
Magazine fed weapons? Enc for a fully loaded magazine is what? Equal to number of grenades up to max of encumbrance of weapon? Half?
More generous enc for grenades overall? Enc 0 is too generous, but perhaps up to 2-3 grenades for 1 enc, to minimum of 1?
Carrying solutions? Grenade bandolier that reduces grenade enc?
The encumbrance includes the loaded grenades. I cannot remember if that is explicitly stated anywhere, but I believe that is the intent of the rules and is how I treat it.
Any additional grenade reloads would be 1 encumbrance until loaded into the launcher.
Remember, encumbrance isn’t just a measurement of weight, but of how difficult it is to carry. Loading six grenades into a launcher makes them far easier to carry.
1 Like
I hear you, but it shouldn’t be easier to carry a second launcher than a full reload, even if it’s just loose rounds in a bag.
That’s where I fall back on “can you really carry two launchers?” and “bulk carry” where the grenades are in a box or bag with a lower total encumbrance.
Like your bandolier idea, it would be essentially saying X can carry Y grenades for Z encumbrance. I’d probably say a bandolier can carry up to three grenades for 1 encumbrance and up to six grenades for 2 encumbrance. A box of six grenades I’d probably put at 2 encumbrance.
1 Like
DH-17 Blasters…
The iconic DH-17 blaster pistol in all it’s chunkiness is given as as an example of a “standard” blaster pistol, damage 6, enc 1. Seems a bit on the small side, at least how they’re depicted in ESB and RoTJ. The ones in ANH are a bit smaller and lacks the side magazine well, and the model in Battlefront sits in between the two, but leans towards the ANH version.
Forged in battle gives us the DH-17 carbine at damage 8, inaccurate 1 (2 in G&G) and enc 2. Seems pretty much in line with their depiction in R1 and sequel trilogy, at least the small ones without rifle stocks. A short blaster-uzi kind of a thing (although inaccurate 2 seems a bit excessive) that can also take the place of the chunkier pistols in the later original trilogy.
Then we get the DH-17c Short carbine in Fully Operational and boy howdy, it’s a doozy.
Despite being described as smaller, shorter carbine, it still bumps up the enc to 3, loses inaccurate but drops the damage to 4 (!) making it a full auto nuisance struggling to compete with holdout blasters for stopping power. It also loses a hardpoint if it wasn’t terrible enough.
The way i run it is to call the pistol version a heavy blaster pistol. Enc 2 and damage 7 puts it in the same ballpark as the carbine, and the lack of a magazine well (and magazine) sticking out of the side gels well with the increased chance of running out of ammo and (it also satisfies my headcanon of it being a cheaper simpler replacement for the DC-17 handblaster)
The carbine is pretty good as is. Enc 2 and the ruling that carbines may be fired one handed makes it reasonable that some would call it a pistol. Inaccurate? It’s a ot of firepower in a small package and no stock, so it makes sense.
The short carbine is all over the place.
Lore-wise, it’s something like this
Stats-wise, it seems that the Enc 3 and no inaccurate would be more inline with the stocked versions of the DH-17 we see in R1 and the sequel films. But that flies in the face of its description and damage rating.
And then there’s the (as of yet) unstatted DH-17 rifle, the fully stocked slightly longer barreled version we see in the more recent films. I’d take the regular carbine stats and up the Enc to three, and drop to the inaccurate quality and/or increase the range to long.
But yeah, the short carbine? Any idea what to do with it and where to fit it into the DH-17 “family”?
DH-17 pistol: Blaster Pistol
DH-17 carbine: 8; 3; Medium; 2 Enc; Auto-fire, Inaccurate 2 (GaG. FiB lists it as Inaccurate 1).
DH-17c short carbine: 4; 3; Medium; 3 Enc; Auto-fire; +50cr
I agree, the DH-17c is just brokenly useless in every conceivable way.
When you compare the two carbines, the short carbine essentially drops the “cone,” making it snub-nosed. I consider this similar to the “shortened barrel” attachment.
I would stat it thusly: 7; 3; Short; 1 Enc; Auto-fire, Inaccurate 1, 2 HP.
“When this weapon is used in its Auto-fire mode, the GM may spend 2 Threat to cause the weapon to run out of ammo or a Despair to cause the weapon to overheat, running out of ammo and dealing 3 Strain to the wielder.”
It gains +1 damage over the SE-14r, but has Inaccurate 1 and is shorter ranged. -1 Encumbrance for -1 HP seems a pretty even trade, as it’s quite potent for being only 1 Encumbrance. However, compared to the SE-14r, it is shorter-ranged. For costing 50 credits less, I think that’s pretty balanced. It has a niche.
I like where your head’s at, but I’m thinking keeping the Enc at 2, like the SE-14r (which perhaps should be dropped to Enc 1, but lets do the SE-14 series next week 
). Drop the inaccurate quality and it becomes sort of a “tamed” version of the carbine, trading power and range for controllability?
Kind of like the SE-14C to SE-14r.
or
The missing “cone” on the other hand visually screams less focus, not more, so I guess you could make it the “deck sweeper” version of the standard carbine by essentially giving it a spread barrel:
Ranged (heavy); Damage 7; Crit 3; Short range; Enc 2; 2 HP; Auto-fire, Blast 4, Stun setting
Stacking blast and auto-fire in theory could let you activate blast multiple times per attack, but requires a ton of advantages to do so.
Perhaps retain Inaccurate 1?
I think “Blast” is best added as an after-market item with the Spread Barrel attachment (2 HP) as discussed in the Wookieepedia article.
I went with -1 Enc because it’s smaller than the carbine and it helps balance, since the basic stats are very similar. Without the -1 Encumbrance, it gets -1 damage, -1 HP, -1 range, +50cr, a more risky effect, and its only positive trade-off is -1 Inaccurate. Making it 1 Encumbrance makes it more of an intermediate step between pistol and carbine and benefits those who really want to maximize their Encumbrance, but don’t want to sacrifice firepower, and it has a higher cost for its stats because of the low encumbrance.
Yeah, we should probably take a look at all the “auto-pistols,” though I only want to change anything if it’s really broken, whether that’s useless or overpowered.
Hmm.
The line between the DH-17 carbine and DH-17 pistol is so vague anyway, so the “short carbine” might as well be more or less an “auto pistol”. Going from blaster pistol stats, retain the medium range, drop a hard point and add auto-fire and inaccurate 1. It becomes comparable to the SE-14, trading 1 point of enc for 1 point of inaccurate at comparable price.
If you want to keep it at short range, keeping it at 3 hard points seems fair.
At 1 enc, it might make more sense to make it a ranged (light) weapon (regardless wether it’s called a “short carbine” or not) as to not make it too easy for those who’ve neglected their ranged (light) skill to get a handy little sidearm.
It compares quite favorably the SE-14C and the IR-5 Intimidator but since they’re
A) cheaper
B) pretty damned bad
I’m not sure that’s a problem.
The reason to work off of the carbine and not the pistol is because the short carbine is a derivative of the carbine, not of the pistol. To make a real-world comparison, it’s really a submachine gun, not so much a machine pistol. That also gives more reason to put it at Ranged (Heavy).
Part of the reason I wanted it at 7; 3; Short is to give it a niche of higher damage/submachine gun rather than adding to the variety of repeating pistols.
Enc 1 should putsit squarely in pistol territory for me, so I’ll probably go with with making it a enc 2 short ranged carbine. Stacking auto-fire and blast isn’t great, so I’m thinking swinging back and giving it Accurate 1 for a larger, more dissipated blast (The I’m not much of a shot but this gun uses really big bullets kind of logic ).
Ranged (heavy); Damage 7; Crit 3; Short range; Enc 2; 3 HP; Accurate 1, Auto-fire, Stun setting
Kinda gives it a bit of a “sawn-off” kind of feel - hard to miss at close range, impossible to hit beyond spitting distance.
I think we’ll probably end up agreeing to disagree I think, but that’s fine. We should each get something out of this that fits our respective tastes and tables, so thanks for the fruitful discussion, regardless! Hopefully you got as much out of it as I did, and that it ends up being useful to anyone else reading!
1 Like