Edge of the Empire Book

System Strain Threshold: The limit to which a ship
or vehicle can be pushed or knocked about before
important systems overload or shut down.

Customization Hard Points: The number of spots avail-
able on a ship or vehicle for customization and upgrade.

HANDLING

Generally speaking, handling reflects a ship or vehicle's
inherent agility and the ways in which it responds to
its pilot and crew. Handling is dictated by a number
of factors. While size is certainly the most obvious—a
Z-95 Headhunter or Firespray Patrol Boat is, by nature,
more maneuverable than a Victory-class Star Destroyer
—other factors such as shape, control systems, mass,
or just general awkwardness all contribute to handling.

In game terms, a ship or vehicle's handling char-
acteristic dictates the number of • or H it adds to
a player's dice pool. Baseline handling is 0, with ex-
tremely agile ships adding • and slow or plodding
ships adding • to all Piloting checks. Pilots add •
equal to a ship's negative handling value or • equal
to a ship or vehicle's positive handling value.

SPEED

An abstraction of both speed and acceleration, a ship
or vehicle's speed characteristic dictates how fast an
object moves relative to its environment and what ma-
neuvers are available to the pilot. The listed speed is
a "maximum" value the ship or vehicle can travel. A
pilot can always choose to go slower than his maximum

speed. Speed 0 indicates a stationary ship or vehicle,

with higher values indicating an increased speed ac-

cordingly (speed 1, for example, might be a slow mov-

ing AT-AT walker or ponderous transport ship, while

speed 5 might be a nimble TIE fighter or cloud car).

SILHOUETTE

Much like the speed characteristic, silhouette is an

abstract number used to describe a ship or vehicle's

size and mass relative to other ships and vehicles.

Silhouette factors heavily into scale, and is used to

calculate the difficulty of attacking targets of different

sizes. Generally, large ships are easy to hit, and small

ships are hard to hit. Some specialized ships, such as

the Lancer-class Anti-Starfighter Frigate, are excep-

tions to this rule as they are large ships fitted with

smaller, lighter guns than their size and class would

suggest, thereby filling specific roles within fleets.

Silhouettes range from 0 to 10. Silhouette 0 is some-

thing smaller than a human (such as a specific starship

component, a Jawa, or an astromech droid) and silhou-

ette 1 is something the size of an adult human. Most

starfighters and light freighters range from silhouette

3 to 4. Silhouette 10 is reserved for the very largest

of space stations or starships, such as the Death Star.

HULL TRAUMA THRESHOLD

Hull trauma threshold is a reflection of a ship or vehicle's

sturdiness and resistance to damage. The strength of a

capital ship's keel, the sturdiness of a speeder truck's

STARSHIPS, VEHICLES, AND SCALE

S

tarships and vehicles follow the same basic

rules for interaction and operation as outlined

in Chapter I: Playing the Game and Chapter

VI: Conflict and Combat. However, due to their

increased size and mass, starships and vehicles

necessarily operate on a different scale, referred

to as the planetary scale.

When dealing with a vessel's weapons, armor, and

hull trauma threshold, every point is equal to ten

points of the equivalent characteristic in the per-

sonal scale. For example, a laser cannon mounted

to a starfighter with a base damage of three deals

three points of damage when fired at another

spacecraft, but thirty points of damage when fired

at a human. Conversely, a man-sized blaster rifle

would need to deal ten points of damage to a star-

ship to inflict even one point of damage to it.

Note that planetary scale weapons deal massive

amounts of damage to individuals. Most hits au-

tomatically deal enough wounds to far exceed a

character's wound threshold, meaning the target

will automatically be incapacitated for the remain-

der of the encounter. However, some GMs may

feel this is insufficient to represent the fearsome

power of a starship weapon when turned on an in-

dividual. In these cases, the GM should feel free to

add +50 to the resulting Critical Injury roll. (Also,

those "hit" by a planetary scale weapon might be

on the periphery of the blast zone, explaining why

they survived somewhat unscathed.)

Also note that to avoid weapons such as blaster

pistols dealing Critical Hits to heavily armored

starships, the damage must exceed a starships

armor before the shot can inflict a Critical Hit.

Planetary scale weapons that have the Blast qual-

ity are particularly effective at decimating ground

targets, even if their explosive radius does not al-

low them to hit multiple targets in space. Starship

blast weapons hit their primary target and every

additional target within short range, instead of

just every target engaged with the original target.