Join The Infernal Brotherhood of the Scruffy Looking, Nerf Herders as they continue their How to Play West End Games’ Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game 30th Anniversary Edition. Today, we are clarifying Dice and Pips in upgrades and play, the new Difficulty Number scale, Combined Actions, and Uncertainty Dice.
Transcript
Intro
Welcome back to The Infernal Brotherhood of the Scruffy Looking, Nerf Herders! Today, we are cracking open the first deep-dive into our new series on the Star Wars Rules Companion. We’re starting exactly where every character begins: with Chapter One: Attributes and Skills.
In the original 1987 core rules, attributes and skills were a solid framework for everything you did in the galaxy. But while those six core attributes haven’t changed, the Rules Companion introduced vital updates to how we read our dice and how Game Masters set the stakes for our actions. If you’ve ever wondered why your character has a 3D+2 instead of just 4D, or how to distinguish between a “Difficult” task and a “Really Difficult” one, this is the episode for you.
Description
Let’s start with the math that powers the engine: Dice and Pips. In this system, everything is measured in six-sided dice, but the Rules Companion better defines those “pips,” which are the little plus-ones and plus-twos that modify your rolls. There is a key distinction here that every player needs to know, and that is how we handle Rounding. When you are improving your character’s skills with skill points or upgrading your ship’s equipment, pips round up into dice. In this specific case, three pips equal one full die. So, if your Blaster skill is currently 3D+2 and you increase it by one pip, it finally becomes 4D. However, during actual gameplay, pips never round up into dice. If you have a massive amount of modifiers from combined actions, you might find yourself rolling 4D+6. You don’t convert that to 6D on the fly; you simply roll the four dice and add the flat six pips to the total.
The next major evolution in this chapter is the refinement of Difficulty Numbers. In the original rules, GMs often had to choose a single target number for a task. The Rules Companion changed this to a Scale to reflect subtle distinctions. Think of it this way: swinging across a chasm in a dusty mine is “Difficult,” but swinging across a shaft in the Death Star while holding a princess and dodging stormtroopers is also “Difficult,” yet it clearly feels more intense. The new scale gives GMs a range to work with. Very Easy tasks fall between three and five, while Easy is six to ten. Moderate actions are eleven to fifteen, and Difficult jumps from sixteen through twenty. For the truly heroic feats, Very Difficult covers twenty-one all the way to thirty. This flexibility allows the GM to reward clever planning or penalize bad luck without having to jump to an entirely different difficulty tier.
One of the most useful additions to this chapter is the mechanic for Combined Actions. This allows a team of Rebels to work together to achieve a single task more effectively in a single round. When characters combine, you designate one person as the leader. That leader uses their skill or attribute for the roll, but every supporting character adds a bonus. Specifically, every supporter adds one pip for every full die they have in that skill. If you have three Rebels with a 4D Repair skill assisting a lead mechanic, each one adds four pips, giving the leader a massive plus-twelve bonus to the total. It’s a great way to show teamwork, though it does count as an action for everyone involved. In high-pressure situations like combat, the number of people who can help is limited by the leader’s Command skill, and coordinating this teamwork is actually considered an action for the leader themselves.
This action is also available to the empire. Stormtroopers may combine their fire as well, and if the leader is wounded the lead firer is shifted to another stormtrooper. This represents a squad of stormtroopers firing in a disciplined volley to ensure a hit against even the most agile Rebel heroes. This coordination allows even low-level troopers to hit legendary targets, making it nearly impossible for a character to dodge out of the way. There are some limitations to this new action however. If a character takes multiple actions in a round, their die code is reduced as per the standard rules. In addition, certain skills cannot be combined, such as Dodge, Parry, Beast Riding, or Starship Piloting. You also cannot combine Perception rolls to notice something, though you can combine for a Search or Con attempt.
Finally, for GMs who want to add a layer of mystery to the table, the Rules Companion introduces the Uncertainty Die as an optional rule. This isn’t about taking away from your skill—it’s about adding suspense to tasks where your character wouldn’t immediately know the outcome, like plotting a hyperspace course or searching for a hidden Rebel base.
Here’s how it works: the GM tells you to add between two and four extra dice to your normal skill roll. If you have an Astrogation skill of 5D and the GM adds three uncertainty dice, you’re rolling a total of eight dice. Behind the screen, the GM rolls those same three dice and subtracts their total from your result. Because the GM doesn’t have to tell you what they rolled, you might end up with a successful 14, but the GM can still give you a worried look and tell you the jump feels “off,” leaving you to sweat until you actually drop out of hyperspace. It’s a perfect way to keep players on edge and immersed in the uncertainty of the galaxy.
Outro
These refinements turned the D6 system into a truly robust engine that could handle everything from a simple bar brawl to complex tech repairs. By standardizing the pip system and expanding the difficulty scales, the Rules Companion gave us the tools to play a more nuanced game without losing that fast-paced, cinematic Star Wars feel.
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Until the Infernal Brotherhood convenes again, my fellow scruffy-looking nerf herders… “May the Force be with you.