Snap-Roll Action

[Filbert66]

Someone on the Discord recommended this house-rule, and when recording it for myself I wondered, there must be strain caused to other passengers of the same ship, right?

Extract of Snap-Roll

Pilot Only: Yes,
Silhouette: 1-4,
Speed: 2+
When his ship is successfully hit by a Gunnery combat check, the pilot can elect to take a Snap Roll Incidental action and reduce the damage of the attack by the sum of their ship’s Handling plus the pilot’s Ranks in Piloting (Planetary or Space, whichever is applicable to the vehicle he’s controlling). This sudden dodge puts the ship, and the pilot, under extreme stress and g-forces; when this incidental action is taken the ship suffers 3 System Strain (bypassing Armor) as the high-G maneuver taxes on-board systems and support surfaces. Additionally, the pilot suffers 3 Strain (bypassing Soak) as those same G-forces pull, crush, and exhaust him.

If a person is wearing a flight suit that reduces the amount of Strain incurred from Critical Hits to the ship, they reduce the Strain they take from a Snap Roll action to 1. Droids are immune to the personal Strain damage as long as they are at a station, locked in a droid socket, or have some other means to prevent them from being bounced around the ship’s interior.

Suggested use of Advantage, Despair, Triumphs:

• A target can spend a Despair on the attack roll to activate Snap Roll at no cost (system strain or personal strain).
• The attacker can spend an 3 Advantage or Triumph to pass along the 3 strain to all occupants of the vehicle, not just the pilot.
• An attacker may spend a Triumph from a Gain the Advantage check to prevent their target from making Snap Roll incidental actions until the end of the attacker’s next turn.

I suggest 2 strain, with logic that pilot executing the maneuver is under more strain than passengers. What do you think? Some might argue for more or less.

What if the passengers are not “strapped in”? Do they have to make a Coordination roll to avoid damage?

[edited Details to note original suggested attacker Triumph spends]

[Filbert66]

What about this: Other passengers suffer 2 strain, and if not strapped into some chair, must make an Average Coordination or Resilience roll and incur damage (soak works) for each Failure, strain for each Threat.

What do you think? Or should it be “suffer wounds (ignoring soak)”?

[edited]
Or we could change passenger impact if not strapped in to a Setback die on their next skill check, to allow the Brace talent to be thematically effective.

Above Setback instead would also allow for the attacker Triumph spend to strain passengers as well, but I’d prefer to switch the attacker Triumph option to be that all pax must make the roll as if they were not strapped in, either because their strap failed or a random object in the ship hit them. And if they were not strapped in, it increases the difficulty of their roll.

[Swordbreaker]

This house rule is more or less the Barrel Roll talent used in the Clone Pilot tree.

You could also use the brace for impact maneuver added to the Genesys rules, which allows the pilot to inflict system strain up to the vehicle’s silhouette to reduce any damage and critical hit results by an equal number (critical hits are x10).

[Filbert66]

Hmm. Don’t like giving away free talents.

Barrel Roll talents

Then again, the talent does not suffer the pilot/passenger strain as this rule does, and has Improved and Supreme forms that this does not, so not quite the same making the talents still desirable.

Given this, I suggest keeping the passenger impacts of this house rule as suggested above.

The Genesys Brace for Impact maneuver is interesting but doesn’t use Piloting ranks and so doesn’t encourage piloting skills, and particularly isn’t so useful for small fighters due to small silhouette. I suppose one option is to make that your widely available house rule and leave the piloting-focused one for those who take the Clone Pilot talent tree.

Personally, I think the Snap Roll is much more cinematic and will use that.