Chrislee66 said:

Thats because they put a blurb in the week five news, 3rd paragragh. You would have looked near it to get the download link. Well, thats were i get the link to the download

 Might it be interesting to give NPCs maybe 2 more talents that are entirely their own? Like adversary, they could be ranked, allowing for them to be mixed and matched in interesting ways. As a GM who has a job that eats up most of my time, I have zero interest in learning all the various player-side talents, nor do I want to be expected to build threats with those talents that will be competitive with PCs who inevitably learn their own abilities inside and out.

But 3 simple talents for NPCs only? Yeah. I could handle that.

This is all to say that I love the adversary talent.

Give me a system where I can stat out a threat in under 60 seconds. Those that wanna use PC rules to make threats? There's nothing stopping them.

RonRamron said:

And that's exactly how it should be. Flexibility to support both camps, whether they want to or have the time to stat everything up, and those who can't or don't want to.

RonRamron said:

Which is what the current Adversary Talent is…it's built on the common Talent paradigm.  Sure it's "NPC Only," but what's the point of having an NPC only exception in an otherwise compatible section of the rules? 

Just yank it out of Talents and shove it into the GM Section.  The deal is, it really has no point lurking in the Talents chapter because it's an NPC modifier mechanic.  Do we have to apply a Minion talent to NPCs?  Henchmen Talents?  No…they're NPC modifications and clearly presented as such.  Do the same with the throttling mechanics for NPCs.  Whether it's a pool, template, overlay, or even an NPC only talent.  You can still make a sandwich if you keep your bread in the closet in your bedroom.  But it might make more sense to keep it in the kitchen.  And now I'm hungry…

The current placement and roll-out of the Adversary talent mucks up an otherwise clean separation between PC and NPC construction and their general overlap.  It really could be as simple as changing its location in the book to maintain organization of the material.  If this was a game where NPCs were entirely built like PCs bar-none…yeah it really wouldn't matter.  Mix and mash up the rules because everyone has to obey the same restrictions (which…sucks from a GM standpoint imo and one of the reasons d20 is the bane of my existence when it comes to building front line NPCs). 

But, when you provide a central resolution mechanic that is approached from separate directions in terms of how you build a participant in an encounter…why suddenly cross over the line just to generate an in-game effect that you could get by writing it into the section of the game system where all the other "NPCs aren't built like a normal PC" rules are already located?

TL;DR  Ctrl-X….Ctrl-V; Problem mostly solved :-)

Callidon said:

Except they've done exactly that.  NPC Only or not, it's a Talent, so it was put in the chapter that is dedicated to the Talents found in the game.

The PCs already get a basic breakdown of the talents for their specializations in Chapter 2, but Chapter 4 is where Talents get their full breakdown.  Since Adversary is listed on the stat blocks as a Talent, putting it in the Talent chapter makes perfect sense.

It also lets players know exactly why their attacks against one particularly enemy are so much harder (i.e. rolling additional challenge dice) even though the GM isn't spending Destiny to upgrade their difficulty.  Yeah, it's a bit meta-gamey, but just every player to one extent or another indulges in a bit of meta-gaming, even if it's only to ask "which bad guy looks the most hurt?" or work out what Armor Class they need to beat in order to land a hit on the BBEG.

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the feedback on the Adversary talent. How we "frame" this ability in the final game is still up for debate, and we'll take your feedback into account when we do so. However, we're more interested in the mechanical effects of the ability. We'd like to know if Adversary 1, for example, drastically increases the danger of an opponent, or if Adversary 3 makes someone nigh-unkillable and is excessive (or not). 

Thanks!

Change Side Step to: “Once per round on the character’s turn, the character may perform a Side Step maneuver to side step and try to avoid incoming ranged attacks. He then suffers a number of strain no greater than his ranks in Side Step. Until the start of the character’s next turn, upgrade the difficulty of all melee combat checks targeting the character a number of times equal to the strain suffered by the character.” Side Step becomes ranked.

This was in the week 4 update that removed most improved talents, but I just caught it… typo? Top line says incoming ranged attacks, next line then says melee attacks. The original was ranged, so I assume that was the intention.

Eruletho said:

I mentioned this last week in the Week 4 thread, but apparently it got overlooked in the furor over the change in non-career specs and skills.

That's a good catch. Thanks to both of you.

If I'm not mistaken, the Adversary talent is not compatible with the Side Step and Defensive Stance talents. If so, wouldn't be better to specify this in the talent's description?

LukeZZ said:

I don't think Adversary is specifically incompatible with Defensive Stance, Side Step, or any other defensive-based talents.  To quote from the Week 5 Updated web page:

"The second major change is the introduction of the Adversary talent. The Adversary talent is a unique ranked talent that is only given to NPCs. It’s designed to replace all other defensive abilities for NPCs, and allows GMs to give mid or high-level adversaries defensive buffs without having to actively track a wide variety of abilities."

So you could in theory give your Nemesis-level NPCs (or even your Henchman level ones) ranks in stuff like Dodge, Defensive Stance, and Side Step, it's just that it behooves the GM to just use Adversary to get much the same effect (boost to defense) without the extra bookkeeping that comes from those talents (maneuver and Strain expenditures specifically).

So for a specific BBEG fought at the end of a story arc, the GM could give them a rank in Adversary and then Side Step to make them really tough to hit with blaster fire, but as noted it's something else the GM has to track and remember to use, and might just be better off going with a couple ranks of Adversary instead.

That said, my and some friends found from our high-level stress test session that the Adversary talent worked quite nicely for it's intended purpose, as the extra challenge die (or dice in some cases) did make those Henchman and Nemesis foes more of a challenge to take down as the heroes didn't generate as many successes and advantages as they would have previously.  Still didn't help much when the Wookiee Death Machine or the Minor Jedi did score a successful hit on said foes, with the WDM taking a Master Hunter straight to dead with a single Critical Hit (vibro-axe, multiple levels of Lethal Blow, and a high percentile roll will do that).

We did have an Autofire-monkey as one of the NPCs we were battling against, and I agree that it does need some refinement.  It and Linked, as both of them are far too inexpensive to activate, and the Linked trait on most starfighter weapons makes it so that the first to score a hit is the survivor.  We pitted TIEs vs. Z-95s using the standard Imperial Pilot minion, and each fight pretty much came down to who scored the first hit, with the only exception being the Y-Wing as it was tough enough to withstand a Linked attack from another starfighter.  For the YT-1300's quads though, since they've got Linked 3, I'm thinking the base damage could be reduced down to 4; still nasty for a starfighter if you get multiple advantages, but not quite insta-lethal like they currently are.

Chrislee66 said:

The GM could give NPC's some/all of the normal defensive talents. The new NPC talent is just a simple way for GM's to keep track of a NPC's defense and there's nothing strange, alarming or cheating about it. It's just a help for the GM.

Gallows said:

I thought Adversary was an aid for the GM, so he has simpler way of handling defensive instead of using the various defensive talents.
If an NPC can have both the Adversary bonus AND the defensive bonus from other talents… it won't help GM to simplify nothing (and NPC can became quite… hard to hit).
 

I think that is exactly what the Adversary talent is - a way to incorporate many different defenses and other various things into one simple Talent, rather than putting on scores and scores of other talents.  It makes enemies easy to make on the fly, rather than a more laborious method of creating them

FFG_Sam Stewart said:

WARNING: Spoilers for Crates of Krayts follows!

Next session of my game is tomorrow night (unfortunately we only play fortnightly), and it'll be the final part of the Crates of Krayts adventure - namely the encounter with Cordell's Chain. The update doesn't include Adversary changes for the bounty hunters, but I'm assuming that the journeyman get Adversary 1 and the boss gets Adversary 2, similar to the generic bounty hunters.

I'll update after tomorrow night with how it works out!