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De-powering Lightsaber Combat

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Bren
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Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2011 5:06 pm Post subject:

atgxtg wrote:

Bren wrote:

So how many skills would you think provides a rough parity, three, five, more?

My question really is what level or number of skills, gives a non-force user on average rough parity with a force user assuming that the force user has a reasonable or typical assortment of powers given their dice in Control, Sense, and Alter? I necessary caveat it for a given situation, counter, or adventure.

Quote:

BTW, some nice factors there. Looks like we share a similar background in gaming. I7m a big RQ fan, and a fan of skill-based RPGsin general, and we have a lot of "overlap" here.

Nice to run into a fellow RQ player. We happily played RQ for many years. I loved the way the cults worked pre HeroQuest. But the Magic Point and Spell Tracking is a bit much for our aged brains. Laughing

Now, though we tend to favor even simpler systems. D6 works a bit better for me, though I will admit the Force rules are sometimes a bit unintuitive.

Quote:

None of our Jedi characters started that good with lightsaber, Control, or Sense.

Well, the high Lightsaber skill was practically a necessity in 1E.

Yeah, I realize that. It's surprising what a large power jump they made from 1E to 2E. Especially since LS combat doesn't have to be that uber.

Quote:

At the time I wrote up the character, difficulties were still in increments of 5, and 6D was needed so I could be reasonably confident of rolling at least an 11 and not hurting myself. That "fail by ten" rule was one of several big hurdles in 1E.

Yeah, even now lightsaber at 6D seems a minimum threshold so that you don't actually hurt yourself. Perhaps one solution is to remove the chance to hit yourself with a lightsaber if you actually have a Sense above 0D. Then padawan's wouldn't need 6D skills just to avoid severing their own legs. Rolling Eyes

Quote:

Anything designed to challenge me, would trash the group. Andeven things designed to challenge me, weren't much of a challenge if I spend a Force Point.

I'm a strong believer that challenges for Jedi characters often need to center not on combat, but on moral challenges. That way it matters more what the character chooses to do rather than how many dice are available for combat or force powers.

Re: Combat Sense - I think the description of focused attention for combat sense is interesting, but the game mechanics are illogical and unplayable with the rest of the RAW. We prefer to just run with a modified danger sense. It works for us and allows the Jedi to have an advantage over normals but not omniscient.

Quote:

It takes multiple normals or special preparation to challenge a Jedi Knight and I agree that really only another force user can challenge a Jedi one on one. I see that more as a feature than a flaw, however. I will note that Qui Gon and Obi-Wan ran away from the Destroyer droid. Even a Jedi can't do that well against them.

In the films, that is true. But not according to RAW. In the RPG, OBi and Qui-Gon would do so much damage with the lighsabers that they could cut right though the droidekas, shields or no shields.

I houserule it that the shields prevent the Jedi from using thier Control to place the attacks for maximum effect, and that Jedi have touse the default damage. It works, but it is a houserule.

Well, as Whill pointed out WEG never did a rule for Droidekas. I think one could allow the additional damage if the Jedi is able to stand still and only try to pierce the shield in the slow way we see Qui-Gonn slowly melting the blast door right before encountering the Droideka. Of course standing still would prevent you from dodging or parrying. Twisted Evil

Quote:

Likewise, according to RAW, the Jedi would have kicked butt on Geonosis. Even with combined fire, the droids woudln't get past the defense.

Making reaction parries apply to a single (as it was in 1E I think) or limited number of attacks (see the house rule that ZzaphodD proposed) would tidy up that event. We tend to do one or the other just because a Jedi parrying 100 attackers just seems physically impossible. Even a Jedi can't have his lightsaber in two places at the same time. For that many attacks dodge it was invented. Wink

garhkal
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Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2011 5:18 pm Post subject:

atgxtg wrote:

garhkal wrote:

atgxtg wrote:

The Jedi would do the same thing, except that raising a force skill automatically raises all the force powers, too.

Then why not go with how the Witches of Dathomir are.. each force power has its own rating..

Probably because it would be too much to the other extreme. PCs would need to spread out their CPs over a lot more "skills", and would probably fall way behind the other characters.

Then hows about combine the 2..

Force skills as is but costlier (say 5x price), and then each power under it can be advanced on its own like the attributes/skills..
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atgxtg
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Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2011 1:14 pm Post subject:

garhkal wrote:

atgxtg wrote:

garhkal wrote:

atgxtg wrote:

The Jedi would do the same thing, except that raising a force skill automatically raises all the force powers, too.

Then why not go with how the Witches of Dathomir are.. each force power has its own rating..

Probably because it would be too much to the other extreme. PCs would need to spread out their CPs over a lot more "skills", and would probably fall way behind the other characters.

Then hows about combine the 2..

Force skills as is but costlier (say 5x price), and then each power under it can be advanced on its own like the attributes/skills..

A good idea.

I think making Force an attribute would help with this, too. Maybe even treat Control, Sense and Alter as attributes. By giving force skills a default value to work with, some of the CP problems would be mitigated.

For example, if somebody had a Force of 2D (or Control 2D, etc.) then they could start off a force power at 2D+1. That would be a big jump on starting Force skills off at 1D, yet it would get expensive to be really good with a power.

atgxtg
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Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2011 1:50 pm Post subject:

Bren wrote:

Tough call. Combat is easy. I7d say your 3D shift is about right there. But for other things I think it has to be done on a case by case basis.

Quote:

]Nice to run into a fellow RQ player. We happily played RQ for many years. I loved the way the cults worked pre HeroQuest. But the Magic Point and Spell Tracking is a bit much for our aged brains. Laughing

Now, though we tend to favor even simpler systems. D6 works a bit better for me, though I will admit the Force rules are sometimes a bit unintuitive.

Differernt systems have differernt perks (and weaknesses). D6 does some thing well, but doesn't hold up so well on other things (which is why most of the house rules adress the same half dozen things).

Quote:

Yeah, I realize that. It's surprising what a large power jump they made from 1E to 2E. Especially since LS combat doesn't have to be that uber.

I think the goal was to make Jedi more powerful at lower ability levels. One thing about D6 Star Wars is that the game was designed to allow players to "play like in he movies" with starting characters. Except for Jedi, who have a development curve.

I suspect Lightsaber Combat would have gotten revised if WEG had retained the rights to Star Wars. I think a few of the rules would have gotten modified (better or worse) to reflect infomation from the prequels.

Quote:

I think it would be even better to just drop the "miss by 10" rule and work hitting oneself into the wild die. The wild die wasn't around in 1E.

But, if you go with my variant of ZzaphodD's idea, a flat plus to LS rolls equal to Sense dice would greatly reduce the Padawan Mortality rate.

Spending Cps kinda eliminated the "hit self" thing anyway.

Or maybe Jedi can opt to be disarmed rather than hit themselves? No one has cut themselves with their own lightsabers in any of the films, but practically everybody has a problem holding onto the things for a entire fight.

Quote:

Not a bad idea. I go so far as to extend it to non Jedi characters too (think of Han Solo's transformation from a mostly self interested smuggler to a true hero). My current Clone Wars campaign has lots of moral challenges. A few weeks back the PCs got to deal with a mining planet where the natives are hostile and pretty much shot down at will by the miners. The PCs were more than a little symapthic for the locals, who were getting butchered for gold. The group wanted to help the locals, but the Republic has given the mininng company the legal rights to mine the planet.

Quote:

Re: Combat Sense - I think the description of focused attention for combat sense is interesting, but the game mechanics are illogical and unplayable with the rest of the RAW. We prefer to just run with a modified danger sense. It works for us and allows the Jedi to have an advantage over normals but not omniscient.

Yeah. it is a good idea, but just badly implemented. Especially in 2R&E where they got rid of declared attacks. I haven't reintroduced the power yet, but I think I will modify it to give the Jedi a "surprise round" when attacked.

Quote:

Yeah,Whill does have a valid point. We can hardly hold WEG responsible for not factoing in for things that didn't exist when they wrote the RPG.

The stand still ided sounds nice, but Control/Dissipate Energy would seem to handle the problem a little too easily.

I think I'd allow Lightsabers to reduce the armor/shield protection if held over time. Something like -1D per SL on damage.

Quote:

Making reaction parries apply to a single (as it was in 1E I think) or limited number of attacks (see the house rule that ZzaphodD proposed) would tidy up that event.

Yes and no. First off 1E still had the one defense roll for all attacks. While I do think the 1 per attack idea would help in some ways, I think it would be disaterous in others. Quite often, the heroes are outnumbered, and it gets much to easy to wipe out anybody with superior numbers. For instance, say you have a sqaud of stormtroopers facing the group. If they all shot at the same PC, twice, even Yoda is going to get MAPped out of existence.

I think the solution is to use more powerfl combining rules.

Quote:

We tend to do one or the other just because a Jedi parrying 100 attackers just seems physically impossible. Even a Jedi can't have his lightsaber in two places at the same time. For that many attacks dodge it was invented. Wink

I don't think dodge is such a great idea there either. I'm for going back to older, more powerful combining rules (or event hat doubling variant), and letting multi fire weapons to shift some of their bonus dice from damage to attack. It should be tougher to stop all the shots from a repeating blaster.

Bren
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Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2011 4:03 pm Post subject:

atgxtg wrote:

Combat is easy. I7d say your 3D shift is about right there. But for other things I think it has to be done on a case by case basis.

Fair enough. Let's call that done with caveats.

Quote:

Yeah, I realize that. It's surprising what a large power jump they made from 1E to 2E. Especially since LS combat doesn't have to be that uber.

Quote:

I think it would be even better to just drop the "miss by 10" rule and work hitting oneself into the wild die. The wild die wasn't around in 1E.

That was what I was suggesting, but for LS I was suggesting it only for Jedi really, just because I think a LS is difficult to use if you can't sense where the massless blade is. But I could live with doing the same to all weapons.

Quote:

Spending Cps kinda eliminated the "hit self" thing anyway.

But we found the Jedi starting PCs burned a lot of CPs just to avoid amputating their own limbs. Whereas normals could either save their CPS or burn CPs to avoid damage from others.

Quote:

Or maybe Jedi can opt to be disarmed rather than hit themselves? No one has cut themselves with their own lightsabers in any of the films, but practically everybody has a problem holding onto the things for a entire fight.

This is brilliant. 8) 8) 8) Force users do seem to need superglue on their lightsaber handles. Rolls below the minimum to hit number as well complications should be lightsaber knocked out of the hand. I really like this idea...well as a GM. When playing Bren the Jedi maybe sometimes not so much. Wink

Moral Challenges:

Quote:

I go so far as to extend it to non Jedi characters too (think of Han Solo's transformation from a mostly self interested smuggler to a true hero).

Of course all characters should have moral challenges, but if I take a typical force sensitive character as the bench mark for moral challenges - non-force sensitives should be challenged less often and the challenges may be less difficult; Jedi should have even more frequent or more difficult challenges than non-force using force sensitives. With great power...

So has your group resolved their moral challenge related to the miners?

Quote:

I find giving the Jedi extra time to prepare or act based on knowing what the opponent is planning on doing works better than artificially trying to get the opponent to declare attacks a round before hand.

Quote:

The stand still ided sounds nice, but Control/Dissipate Energy would seem to handle the problem a little too easily.

Well, generally it is a lot harder to absorb/dissipate than it is to parry. But either forcing them to concentrate i.e. only take the one action or having the damage slowly increase/reduce armor & shields also works. And as a bonus - the slow burn through is more dramatic. 8)

Quote:

Making reaction parries apply to a single (as it was in 1E I think) or limited number of attacks (see the house rule that ZzaphodD proposed) would tidy up that event.

I agree -1MAP per shot makes even Yoda very vulnerable to a squad of attackers. But if I recall ZzaphodD had suggested an ability to parry more than one shot (maybe D in Sense shots) for each -1MAP.

Quote:

I think the solution is to use more powerfl combining rules.

Quote:

I don't think dodge is such a great idea there either.

I don't understand your objection. Would you explain further? As long as there is some cover to dive behind or run around, I'm fine with someone dodging lots of shots. I see it in movies all the time.

ZzaphodD
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Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2011 8:02 pm Post subject:

Also, what says that even Yoda is supposed to be able to parry 20 shots per round? If hes so powerful he wouldnt end up in that situation to begin with, use telekinesis to jump out of the way or come up with some other Jedi trick.. _________________ My Biggest Beard Retard award goes to: The Admiral of course..

Galen_Paratus
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Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2011 1:41 pm Post subject:

ZzaphodD wrote:

Also, what says that even Yoda is supposed to be able to parry 20 shots per round? If hes so powerful he wouldnt end up in that situation to begin with, use telekinesis to jump out of the way or come up with some other Jedi trick..

Watch the scene in Episode 3 where yoda is taking on about 15 clone troopers in the jedi temple. He is clearly deflecting well over 15-20 shots in about 5 seconds.

Google yoda vs clones and the video should pop right up

ZzaphodD
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Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2011 2:23 pm Post subject:

Galen_Paratus wrote:

ZzaphodD wrote:

Cant check it out atm, but its really of little value. Theres scores of things an ordinary person can do in 5 secs that you cannot do in a round of D6 with a reasonable chance of success. Thats why I speak of the abstract term 'round' and not 'five seconds'. If we go by 'real time' those Clonies should be able to squeze off at least 20 shots each during that time..

Compared to other things characters can do in a round, is there a reason why parrying blasters can be done en masse... I think there should be more to Jedi combat than just running straight at the enemy parrying...
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Galen_Paratus
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Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2011 5:37 pm Post subject:

Quote:

Compared to other things characters can do in a round, is there a reason why parrying blasters can be done en masse... I think there should be more to Jedi combat than just running straight at the enemy parrying...

The reasons I stick with one roll to deflect all blaster shots in a round is (1) to cut down on dice rolls. Rolling for each shot is completely unacceptable in a 5 to 1 or a 10 to 1 situation. (2) The dynamic of the wild die can make even the lowest dice pool capable of making that one lucky blow. One of my players rolled a 36 on 3 dice. Granted that 's a small chance, but still there. (3) Coordinated actions raise the dice pools of everyone firing. Further increasing their chances of getting through the defenses of the Jedi.

An optional rule I have used for some time a diminishing return effect where the rolled reaction drops by 2 for every attack beyond the first. Rolling a 36 with 10 attacks coming your way would result in a fast dropping defense (36, 34, 32, 30, 28...18) forcing the Jedi to adopt new tactics before he gets shot in the face.

Oh and unless you're using an abstract for round length, the core book does state that a round is five seconds.

ZzaphodD
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Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2011 7:25 pm Post subject:

Galen_Paratus wrote:

Quote:

I havent seen anyone suggesting rolling a separate diceroll for each parry, but perhaps I missed it. I have, in another thread, suggested a new mechanic for parrying blaster shots. Its not based on the attack roll, but on the number of shots. Indeed it works similar to your optional rule. Parrying one shot is Easy, and each shot after that increases the difficulty by +2. You parry each shot until the difficulty becomes higher than the parry roll, after that each shot hit.

Quote:

Oh and unless you're using an abstract for round length, the core book does state that a round is five seconds.

Well, not really. The core rulebook states that:

Quote:

Star Wars uses rounds to keep track of time when
every second counts. Each round represents five seconds
of time — give or take a few seconds for dramatic
license.

"A few seconds" means that a round could be between 2 seconds to perhaps 7 or 8. Thats not really the same as saying the rulebook says 'five seconds'.
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atgxtg
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Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2011 12:26 pm Post subject:

ZzaphodD wrote:

It is pretty much a commonfor PCs to be outnumbered by the bad guys in Star Wars. So they need to be able to defend against superior numbers.

If it didn't work this way, Jedi wouldn't last very long. The Empire would probably adopt a policy of having troops (especially Stormtroopers9 concentrate on the Jedi.

My solutuon to this problem is my "FlaK rule".

atgxtg
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Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2011 1:03 pm Post subject:

Quote:

But what happens at higher levels is a pretty easy unintended consequence to consider when making things easier for lower levels. I'm thinking the designer(s) just messed up. I do wish they had a chance to revise after the prequels. Might have been a good opportunity and excuse to improve lightsaber combat.[/quote]

Yeah, Ithink they messed up to. But then, I think the same about having starting characters being able to go through stormtroopers the way Luke and Han do. I think they should have made the standard NPCs a bit togher (say 6D instead of 4D) and just allowplatyers the option of writing up experienced characters with more dice.

Quote:

Yeah, but I think it is a double penalty. It is more difficult to use and had the miss by 10 penalty. Personalty, I wish all melee weapons used the same difficulty and maybe some got 1D of "fire control" or some such to reflect ease of use. Most people parry, so the defalt doesn7t mean much to anyone except Jedi wielding lightsabers.

Quote:

But we found the Jedi starting PCs burned a lot of CPs just to avoid amputating their own limbs. Whereas normals could either save their CPS or burn CPs to avoid damage from others.

We found the same thing. Along with burning Cps to get LSC up in the first place. IMO being a Jedi goes from being too hard, to okay, to too easy. It is a vicious learning curve. If the PC Jedi can survive long enough to get competent with the lightsaber, he has probably gotten to be very dangerous without one.

Quote:

Yeah, I sometimes come up with a good idea. I think I like the drop lightsaber idea better as a default for Jedi than the hit self. It fits the films and sorta makes sense for those who can supposely see the future and react to it. Get decaptitated or drop weapon. I know what I'd pick.

Quote:

So has your group resolved their moral challenge related to the miners?

Not really, but that is part of what I am going for with the Clone Wars. Some of the situations are "Catch-22" and are designed to reinforce the corruption of the Republic. Several such story arcs are being played out to "ad" conclusions. In this particular story arc, the natives are going to attack the miners in retaliation for the village that got wiped out and temple that was violated. The Pcs will probably have to try and help the miners, even though they can understand why the natives are restless. Meanwhile, the Hutt who caused all this to happen, is going to try and sell the holocron he recovered from the temple to Dooku.

Quote:

]I find giving the Jedi extra time to prepare or act based on knowing what the opponent is planning on doing works better than artificially trying to get the opponent to declare attacks a round before hand.

Amen. Some things I find work well:

1) Giveng the Jedi a "surprise" round.
2) Being more flexible with "reaction" skills. Basically allow the Jedi to use any skill as a reaction. skill when the power is up.
3) Let the Jedi declare his number of actions last, regardless of who is going first.
4) Let the Jedi take more time during his turns than the other PCs. This helps to simulate the reacting to things that haven't happened yet.

Quote:

Well, generally it is a lot harder to absorb/dissipate than it is to parry.

Yeah, but it does get kinda easy, specially with a FP to stand there and cut down droidekas.

Maybe shields should give some sort of "parry" defense, too.

Quote:

But either forcing them to concentrate i.e. only take the one action or having the damage slowly increase/reduce armor & shields also works. And as a bonus - the slow burn through is more dramatic. 8)

It is certainly an improvement over RAW.

Quote:

I agree -1MAP per shot makes even Yoda very vulnerable to a squad of attackers. But if I recall ZzaphodD had suggested an ability to parry more than one shot (maybe D in Sense shots) for each -1MAP.

I just think that the setting needs to be generous to PCs when outnumbered, since that is pretty much the standard situation.

Quote:

I like powers of 2 for combining - each doubling increases damage or attack by 1D. It is relatively easy to calculate and makes more sense to me than dividing by threes. I also don't like the command one person per D. That means even sergeants would need about an 8D command skill to run a squad which is just ludicrous.[/quote]

Total agreement here. What I7ve been playing with is increasing the difficulty of the command roll for greater numbers rather than just capping the bonus.

I've also modfied my FlaL rules to handle this sitatuion. Basically the Jedi makes one parry roll, against an attack value that gets boosted for combined fire. If he Jedi fails he gets hit. If he fails by 5+ he gets hit twice, 10+ hit 3 times and so on.

Quote:

I think it makes dodge too powerful. Why bother to parry id dodge does the same thing, only better? Plus, I don't think it is much easier to dodge 100 blaster bolts than it is to parry 100 blaster bolts. And i find it difficult to accept that Han could dodge a barrage that and Yoda couldn't parry..

ZzaphodD
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Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2011 1:30 pm Post subject:

atgxtg wrote:

ZzaphodD wrote:

Well, 5 vs 1 is superior numbers. 10+ vs 1 running head on is just stupidity. You want to enourage creative thinking and alternative solutions, not just hack n' slash (we got D&D for that).
As I pointed out, which people seems to ignore/miss, is that a 'good' jedi would use his skills not to end up at the wrong end of 20 blasters to begin with. Or if he does, do something to quickly get out of there (or in the middle of the attackers), force jump (TK) for example....
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Bren
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Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2011 3:10 pm Post subject:

ZzaphodD wrote:

...I havent seen anyone suggesting rolling a separate diceroll for each parry, but perhaps I missed it...

I have. I recall it as a fairly common house rule along with a "haste" rule. I believe Mike Soulier was a big proponent back on the Star Wars forum that Jae Walker moderated back in the mid 1990s. I think we used both rules for a time. The haste rules work nicely for gunfighter style quick draw duels and a few other dramatic actions. Both together work well as long as the PCs aren't outnumbered more than 2-1.

atgxtg wrote:

I think they should have made the standard NPCs a bit togher (say 6D instead of 4D) and just allowplatyers the option of writing up experienced characters with more dice.

I am OK with most of the standard NPCs. Though I tend to assume DEX and skills already include the armor penalty - effectively making average stormtroopers 1D better with DEX and related skills.

atgxtg wrote:

Personalty, I wish all melee weapons used the same difficulty and maybe some got 1D of "fire control" or some such to reflect ease of use. Most people parry, so the defalt doesn7t mean much to anyone except Jedi wielding lightsabers.

I am not a big fan of different melee difficulties. Just having to remember that this weapon is eay to use, that one is difficult etc. adds complexity with fairly minimal benefit. And it is not just starting Jedi who are crocked by the difficulties. It also effects starting characters who try to use some of the high damage melee weapons e.g. Sat'Skar or Jengardin Double-Bladed
Vibroblade.

atgxtg wrote:

Yeah, but it does get kinda easy, specially with a FP to stand there and cut down droidekas.

I would argue this is easy. Droidekas have heavy repeating blasters doing 8D damage. So absorb/dissipate difficulty is moderate (11-15)+ damage (avg 28) which on average requires a roll of 39-43 while taking actions for attack, LS combat up, a/d energy. Being conservative and assuming we have a modified LS combat rule that has no MAPs penalty. That is -1MAP for attack and a/d. To succeed at the top of the average difficulty range requires just over 12D rounding up to 13D + -1MAP means 14D before using a Force point. So the Jedi needs a 7D alter. And that is for the Droideka(s) taking only one shot. Since the Jedi is not moving, dodging, or parrying I would think the Droideka could fire multiple times and each shot must be absorbed separately - which equals more MAPs penalties and more chances for the Jedi to roll unusually bad or the Droideka to roll unusually well. I would hardly call this an easy option for characters below mastery level. Certainly none or our PCs would be likely to succeed. Regarding a parry defense for shields - I don't think that would help since the Jedi can have such a high attack. I'd be more inclined to rule that shields can absorb a 5D or 6D character scale hit and that therefore the Jedi has to stand there and slowly build up damage to pierce the shield - which being spherical doesn't really have a weak point to penetrate with a single, fast force guided strike. I can live with Yoda being powerful enough to stand there and take out one Droideka and I think most Jedi's below mastery level will be taking a risk standing toe to toe with a Droideka. They may be better off running and dodging/parrying to make the Droideka drop its shield to roll in pursuit. Then the Jedi can spring an attack on the unshielded droid in response.

I take your point on the PCs being outnumbered very significantly and I agree that any changes needs to be considered in that light. See my comment to ZzaphodD above. In my experience generally the PCs are outnumbered in the early scenes, but fairly often at the climactic battle the PCs may face a single, tougher Dark Force user vs. multiple PCs. So the disadvantages for being outnumbered aren't always against the PCs.

atgxtg wrote:

Bren wrote:

I see the parry as allowing the Jedi to advance or retreat in his chosen direction. With the speed of his advance limited by successful parrying, MAPs, and terrain along with possibly a GM fudge factor for does it seem reasonable that he can move in the desired direction given number of attackers, terrain, etc. On the other hand, I see dodge as moving in the direction of cover (which may not be the direction the PC/player wants to move) and less under the PC/player's control but more based on terrain, cover, and GM whim. Given a lot of shooters, I would expect a Jedi Master to be where the shots aren't (dodge and TK jump) or to use cover (interpose solid object with TK) rather than use his lightsaber like some type of propeller force shield.

garhkal
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Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2011 6:46 pm Post subject:

atgxtg wrote:

Bren wrote:

Amen. Some things I find work well:

1) Giveng the Jedi a "surprise" round.

IMO that is what having Danger sense is for.. Don't have it you don't get any additional action(s)..

atgxtg wrote:

2) Being more flexible with "reaction" skills. Basically allow the Jedi to use any skill as a reaction. skill when the power is up.

Disagree.. Now SOME others i could poss see.. like TK for those grenades getting tossed.. BUT any? Nope.

atgxtg wrote:

3) Let the Jedi declare his number of actions last, regardless of who is going first.

Now this i like.

atgxtg wrote:

4) Let the Jedi take more time during his turns than the other PCs. This helps to simulate the reacting to things that haven't happened yet.

Combat mind imo is for that.

atgxtg wrote:

Bren wrote:

Well, generally it is a lot harder to absorb/dissipate than it is to parry.

Yeah, but it does get kinda easy, specially with a FP to stand there and cut down droidekas.

Being you need to ab dis EACH shot at Damage taken +15, i disagree. Plus if you fail to AB dis, you take FULL DAMAGE...

atgxtg wrote:

I just think that the setting needs to be generous to PCs when outnumbered, since that is pretty much the standard situation.

I disagree they need any more 'generous' givings..

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Yup. 5 to 1 i can see. 10 to one or more and IMO unless a film canon character (who therefore has script immunity) you are (or should be) toast.

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I am OK with most of the standard NPCs. Though I tend to assume DEX and skills already include the armor penalty - effectively making average stormtroopers 1D better with DEX and related skills.

I do something like that.. IMO the book stats for stormies represent those just out of the academy. Once they have 6 months or so under their belt, they start ignoring the D penalties from armor...

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Plus depending on HOW one is dodging, you might not be able to counter attack..
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