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CRMcNeill
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 Posted: Sat Jan 15, 2011 10:40 pm Post subject: Battle Mind (Expanded Lightsaber Combat) |
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For quite some time I have been considering a Lightsaber Combat ability with a broader scope to reflect the multitude of occurrences in the canon where the Force is used to amplify a Jedi's combat abilities even when they are not using a lightsaber. Examples include unarmed combat, starfighter combat, ranged weapon combat, etc. The Lightsaber Combat article on Wookiepedia states that Jedi regularly combined unarmed combat moves, such as Force-amplified punches and kicks with their lightsaber Forms. As such, here is my new version of Lightsaber Combat.
Battle Mind (Expanded Lightsaber Combat)
Author's Note: Combines and expands the Force powers of Combat Sense and Lightsaber Combat
Description:
With this power, a Force user can focus the power of the Force to enhance his own abilities in a wide variety of combat situations. When active, the Jedi's senses extend all around him, highlighting any active combatants and potential threats, and the Force guides his actions on attack and defense, augmenting his physical combat training and abilities.
Difficulty:
Control - Moderate
Sense - Easy
This power may be kept "up"
Rules:
When using this power, a Force user may add his Sense dice to his attack and reaction rolls, and his Control dice to his damage rolls (with restrictions, see below). On damage rolls, the Jedi may declare in advance the degree of damage he wishes to inflict, but must roll one difficulty level higher than that level to succeed. Using this rule, the Jedi can also choose to inflict a Maimed result rather than killing the target outright (Maimed requires a Killed result, but merely Incapacitates the target while inflicting a permanent injury, such as an amputation).
A Force adept using this power will always have initiative, and can declare when his action will occur in the round. If more than one Force user is using this power, then roll initiative as normal to determine whose initiative has precedence
Restrictions:
Battle Mind works best when combined with non-Force combat training. It may be applied to any form of personal combat, armed or unarmed, as well as vehicle combat. The minimum combat bonus is +2D, however the Sense bonus can be no higher than the character's skill in the weapon being used (i.e. if used to enhance a Blaster skill roll, and the Force user has a Blaster of 5D and a Sense of 8D, only 5D of Sense dice may be added to the attack roll).[Optional: This rule may also be applied to damage rolls, with exceptions for specialized Jedi weaponry]
Jedi may use this skill as a reaction to ranged weapon fire (as per the Lightsaber Combat skill), but not all weapons are capable of deflecting blaster bolts. Unless otherwise noted, any object struck by a blaster bolt takes full damage, while any object listed as "lightsaber resistant" functions as a lightsaber for the purposes of deflecting ranged weapons fire. A Jedi may even react to ranged weapons while unarmed, but must combine this ability with Absorb/Dissipate Energy or a similar ability.
Thoughts?
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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hazardchris
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| Posted: Sun Jan 16, 2011 11:33 pm Post subject: |
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| I've just always gone with Enhance Attribute in those situations. |
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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| Posted: Sun Jan 16, 2011 11:40 pm Post subject: |
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| hazardchris wrote: | | I've just always gone with Enhance Attribute in those situations. |
The problem is that Enhance Attribute gives you a maximum bonus of +3D, which only lasts for one round, so you have to re-roll every round and hope you get that high, plus you get hit with the -1D MAP, so depending on your roll, there is even the chance that you could succeed in the roll and still net nothing as a bonus.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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garhkal
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| Posted: Sun Jan 16, 2011 11:55 pm Post subject: |
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True. BUT you can spend 1cp to inc that bonus a round...
Personally i see this as a not needed skill. Jedi already can add to their combat stats (COMBAT MIND, Enhance attrib, concentration).. they don't need yet another one.
Also, while i can see it adding to their melee/brawl, i cannot see this helpig them do more damage with a vehicle or fighters weapons.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 1:48 am Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | True. BUT you can spend 1cp to inc that bonus a round...
Personally i see this as a not needed skill. Jedi already can add to their combat stats (COMBAT MIND, Enhance attrib, concentration).. they don't need yet another one.
Also, while i can see it adding to their melee/brawl, i cannot see this helpig them do more damage with a vehicle or fighters weapons. |
This wouldn't be "another" combat skill. It would replace Combat Sense and Lightsaber Combat with a skill that allows the Jedi to apply the same basic power to all combat situations. After all, according to the current rules, a Jedi may only apply his Sense and Control Dice directly to lightsaber. With any other form of combat, he's no better than the rest of us (worse, in fact, since he has spent all of his CPs on improving his Force skills). This skill would allow you to apply those same bonuses to any combat situation, something that both the canon and official material bears out (after all, if Jedi can only do that with a lightsaber, why didn't Qui-Gon or Obi-Wan just chop one of Darth Maul's legs off when he kicked them, since he couldn't apply his Sense dice to that attack, but the two Jedi could? Why would a Jedi even bother with brawling combat moves at all, which they seem to do a lot in the prequels, if they have a lightsaber in hand?)
A Force adept character could conceivably spend CPs and FPs in this fashion, but he'd be burning them like they were going out of style in a combat heavy environment, leaving him with nothing for character advancement. In the movies and EU, Jedi characters spend round after round in high threat environments, drawing on the Force to enhance their combat skills in ways that have no basis in the Force powers as written by WEG, and CPs/FPs are good as a short-term substitute, but not for sustained use.
As for doing more damage, the reason that Control dice is added to the damage is not just because of strength, but also because the Jedi's extreme control over their own body allows them super-human control of the accuracy of the strike, aiming the weapon to precisely strike the point where it will do the most damage. In game terms, Sense tells you where to strike, and Control boosts the energy behind the strike and allows you to strike it with pinpoint precision. I included the option of a cap on the Sense and Control bonuses to preserve balance, as it requires the Jedi to actually put dice into the physical skills instead of dumping everything into Sense and Control.
Obviously, it is a combination of factors, and there is no perfect solution or explanation. I'm sure that my argument has its weaknesses, but I'm looking for a balance of fast gameplay and accuracy. The easiest way to do that is to modify the rules as written to represent the scenarios presented in the official material, and that means an expansion of Lightsaber Combat. A combat round moves much more quickly and is much more exciting if the character can make fewer dice rolls, turn fewer pages, and worry less about MAPs (up to a point).
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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ZzaphodD
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| Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 5:25 am Post subject: |
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I feel the Jedis are filling up all combat positions with this skill..
So far the Bounty Hunters have been better at shooting his blaster and lobbing his thermals, no more now.
Im not much for 'balance' as a GM as I tend to give all characters a place, but with this it becomes harder and harder. At least combat-wise theres no reason NOT to make a Jedi as they will dominate every aspect of combat. Sure its fun in the movies where all the heroes are Jedis, but that doesnt mean that its fun in a gaming group (perhaps if you run an all Jedi group, but then you have to run all-Jedi opponents too so its a moot point).
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garhkal
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| Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 8:43 am Post subject: |
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I'm with Z.. This would make Jedi the all important combat guy, more so than an actual gunbunny as this would allow the Jedi to rule in all forms of combat.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 1:21 pm Post subject: |
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| ZzaphodD wrote: | I feel the Jedis are filling up all combat positions with this skill..
So far the Bounty Hunters have been better at shooting his blaster and lobbing his thermals, no more now.
Im not much for 'balance' as a GM as I tend to give all characters a place, but with this it becomes harder and harder. At least combat-wise theres no reason NOT to make a Jedi as they will dominate every aspect of combat. Sure its fun in the movies where all the heroes are Jedis, but that doesnt mean that its fun in a gaming group (perhaps if you run an all Jedi group, but then you have to run all-Jedi opponents too so its a moot point). |
So the only way to threaten a Jedi with this power would be other Force users, high-level droid baddies or massed attack with expendable troops (I think I've seen that somewhere).
A possible alternative might be to balance Force users out in the story by making them social pariahs or hunted criminals, and if they use these abilities, terrifyingly powerful villains would become aware of them and come seek them out to do them harm. You could also bind them by an ethical code that limits them to using these powers within certain limitations; limitations that their enemies aren't bound by (I think I've seen that somewhere, too).
Another possibility would be, if your PCs are a mix of Force users and non-Force users, split the group and give each sub-group different missions, and opponents suitable to their skill level. For instance, you could give your non-Force users a bunch of droids or stormtroopers to fight, while your Jedi are in another location entirely, unable to assist their friends because they are in a battle with another powerful Force user (Am I the only one feeling a sense of deja vu here?)
Ok, all sarcasm aside, PCs in general are unbalancing. Compared to the baseline average attributes of the teeming masses in the SWU, even a freshly created character is a prodigy, easily the best on his planet within his skill set, with the potential to become much more very quickly. Jedi are a quantum leap above that. By their very nature, they are unbalancing, and that increases exponentially the more powerful they become.
My goal with the creation of new rules for certain Force powers, as well as upgrading Dueling Blades, is an attempt to duplicate, in the rules and gameplay, the pacing and situations found in the movies and novels. Things move fast, things are exciting, and people with Force abilities can do super-human things. By comparison, a table-top lightsaber fight by WEG's rules has all the excitement of watching a checkers match down at the old folk's home. The best way to do that is to use alternate rules that cut down on the number of dice rolls (Dueling Sabers, for example), and broaden the scope of Force powers so that multiple forms of combat are covered under the Aegis of a single ability, as that cuts down on page turning, dice rolling, and MAPs.
For beginning characters, this power is really little more than Enhance Attribute, what with the minimum 2D bonus. The character is required to put skill dice somewhere other than into his Force skills if he wants to improve, and at first, the character is very similar to the abilities of Force users in the RAW. It is only at higher levels that Force users would become unbalancing with this ability, and lets face it: at that level they would be unbalancing regardless.
Now, that being said, I'm amenable to suggestions regarding diluting the power of this ability in the name of balance. Suggestions?
EDIT:
A possible way around this would be placing penalties in skill advancement. Zaphod, I know you and I discussed this in a different thread, about my skills and attributes idea. My basic idea is that Force skills would progress at a higher cost than regular skills. In D6 Space, normal skills progress at normal cost, but Metaphysics skills progress at twice normal cost. If we used Zaphod's version, regular skills would cost twice as much to improve, so Force skills would cost 3-4 times as much to improve. That would offer the character a choice between putting his CPs into normal skill purchase, or putting them into a single skill that could be used to enhance multiple skills, at higher cost.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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garhkal
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| Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 7:36 pm Post subject: |
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From this and the other threads, it seems your goal is to uberize the jedi even more than they already are.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 7:56 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | From this and the other threads, it seems your goal is to uberize the jedi even more than they already are. |
<shrug> If the shoe fits... As I said, I'm trying to make them fit the way they are portrayed in the canon and official media. More than just a myriad of myopic abilities that sort of make the Jedi that good, I'm trying to make a system to streamline combat rounds, making them faster and more exciting. If, in the process, I uberize the Jedi, then I will find a way to add in more balance. Any suggestions?
I'm also working on some ideas that would make regular martial artists, like Noghri or Mandalorian Commandos, a match for low-to-middling level Jedi, so as to give them some more worthy opponents. Ultimately, I think Dueling Blades would be an excellent overarching system to use for all forms of Brawling and Melee combat. Thoughts?
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 8:38 pm Post subject: |
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On a related note, I'm watching some Clone Wars episodes with General Grievous, and he is parrying blaster bolts with his lightsabers. He isn't the only non-Force sensitive character that I've seen do this in Clone Wars, either. Granted, Clone Wars seems to have sacrificed a lot of the Jedi's potential power and foresight for the sake of storytelling, but it does make one wonder. According to WEG, the only way one can parry a blaster bolt would be with a lightsaber augmented by Lightsaber Combat, which Grievous, as a non-Force sensitive, doesn't have. If this ability is not strictly the realm of the Jedi, what would be the difficulty level required for a non-Force sensitive to parry a blaster bolt with a Melee weapon?
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hazardchris
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| Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2011 1:04 am Post subject: |
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On page 39 of the R&E Rulebook it says:
| Quote: | | ...it's very, very difficult for a character without [lightsaber combat] to parry blaster shots. |
In light of that, I'd say Very Difficult. |
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hazardchris
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| Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2011 1:08 am Post subject: |
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Honestly though, if you're looking for a system that gives Jedi the power level that they have in the post-Prequel canon, you might want to look into the Saga Edition RPG. It's a little more geared towards high-powered Jedi.
The D6 system wasn't really designed for that style of play in-mind. It was designed based on what was known about Jedi abilities from the OT, which were far less spectacular and more of a subtle thing. Not saying that it can't be adapted, but that's just my two cents. |
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2011 1:22 am Post subject: |
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| hazardchris wrote: | Honestly though, if you're looking for a system that gives Jedi the power level that they have in the post-Prequel canon, you might want to look into the Saga Edition RPG. It's a little more geared towards high-powered Jedi.
The D6 system wasn't really designed for that style of play in-mind. It was designed based on what was known about Jedi abilities from the OT, which were far less spectacular and more of a subtle thing. Not saying that it can't be adapted, but that's just my two cents. |
I haven't played D20 Star Wars, just D&D 3.0 and 3.5, so I will take your word for it. My main issue with D20 in general is that it usually ends up being overly complicated. Creating a character requires charts and tables and reading through chapter after chapter for obscure bits of information that, while providing relative accuracy, also make the game that much more complicated. With D6, things are simple (almost too simple, IMO). You have attributes and skills, and the dice ratings on those attributes and skills tell you what you need to know about what the character is capable of. Plus, I feel that a skill-based system like D6 more accurately reflects the way real life would work, as opposed to something level-based like D20. Bottom line, D6 is my most favorite, most enjoyed RPG rule system. I just think there are quite a few places where it could be even better.
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ZzaphodD
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| Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2011 4:02 am Post subject: |
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| hazardchris wrote: | On page 39 of the R&E Rulebook it says:
| Quote: | | ...it's very, very difficult for a character without [lightsaber combat] to parry blaster shots. |
In light of that, I'd say Very Difficult. |
Id say Very, Very Difficult. 
Thats 2 below Heroic right?
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