Telekinesis on Starships

[Methedor]

I've been tackling with the idea of using TK on starfighters and other ships in flight, mainly due to the fact that my players have tried it a few times.

In the beginning I was using the write up that TK standardly causes movement at 10m\round with a +5 modifier per additional 10m\round along witht he mention that a space unit can be\is 100m. Therefore a fighter moving at space 5 is moving at 500m\round. The TK difficulty would then be around 50.

However is that really fair, incredible things can be done with the force (and some of my player has Alters of 7D+). Additionally Master Ikirit apparently was swatting fighters around with TK during the Vong Incursion. So I was trying to think of an alternate way that is difficult, but not impossible. Currently I am thinking about using the following:

Mass difficulty + Current Space Move (atmo divide by 20*) + Piloting skill
[+ Other standard difficulty modifiers for complex movement where applicable. If being used to increase mode in space the difficulty is +10\space move]
* If atmo speed was 100 then it would be +5. Round fractions up, minimum +1.

If this were used on a ship in the process of moving then they would move their move from the previous round in the new direction and the player can for added difficulty increase the speed for the target object. Also this would need to be re-rolled per round as an action to be kept up. As a base this could also be used against speeder and swoops. In the case of collusion speeds it would increase by one step per round of sustained acceleration or a difficulty +20 for it to be increased without waiting.

How does this sound to you, my fellow Game Masters. Any advise or thoughts on the topic?

[Naaman]

That's a lot of math to have to calculate while running combat...

If it were my game, Id use a chart that simply laid out the modifiers to the mass difficulty. So it woul read something like: "Difficulty: target's piloting roll modified by speed and mass."

This would likely bring the diffs up into the 50s.

One thing I've done as a Jedi is fling space debris and other battle wreckage at enemy ships, rather than just sit still and not participate.

[Methedor]

Thanks for responding, when I say mass I'm reffering to the weight difficulty table. Though It wouldn't be so bad since when I have lots of things going on I have an assumption as to how fast groups of NPCs move and I use auto-rollers when dealing with a large number of NPCs.

How did your GM handle you flinging debris? Was it just an Alter to lift and Control to target? I would think he or she would be fudging the speed\distance difficulties. Wish I could do that with my group, usually whenever I make a call based on drama part of my player base takes it as me setting a presedent instead of what it is, something cool that I'm allowing the character to do in "this" instance.

But to address you concern about lots of math here's an example of how I envision it going.

A player wants to move a fighter trying to strafe the group, lets assume a classic TIE fighter.

Difficulty: Moderate 13 (starfighter)
+10 (atmo move of 200/20)
+24 (pilot roll avg of 8d6)
= 47

Hmm, it still seems a bit high, doesn't it? Maybe something simpiler, like, Weight difficulty + Pilot Roll?

Difficulty: Moderate 13 (starfighter)
+24 (pilot roll avg of 8d6)
=37

[Naaman]

I'm of the impression that it SHOULD be hard... a lot harder than just shooting the enemy out of the sky. Once the Force becomes a simple soluton to everything, you lose the significance of the other non-force-using characters.

If it were that easy, Anakin, Obi-Wan, et al would never even need to know how to fly a ship in combat.

As for flinging space debris, we just used alter vs pilot, with a minimum alter roll required to even move an object (even if the alter roll was higher than the pilot roll, if it wasn't high enough to move the object, it was a failure). We try to roll only one force skill per use of the force.

[Naaman]

However, its your game. If you want a difficulty in the 30s, try using just the speed modifier added to the pilots roll.

I can see a case for using speed+mass+maneuverability (no piloting skill dice)...

Or pilot skill (no maneuverability)+speed.

[Methedor]

[Naaman]

You're wwelcome. And I'm sure others will chime in with ideas that never would have occured to either of us.

[garhkal]

Why is scale not being a factor? in the films we never see any jedi using TK on anything but character scale items.. No flinging fighters into others. no using tk to move a target into the path of your blasters..

In the novels, we have Master (ie around 13+ dice in alter, so can hit 50 or so) tikrit hurling debris AT ships (not the ships themselves).. Dorsk 81 using one of the jedi academy Ziggurats and many other jedi to focus/combine power to hurl a fleet of star destroyers. And then Luke in the NJO lockig onto the 'black hole' effect of a walker scale Doval bassal, hurling it into the vehicle/creature making it..
All 3 showed either masters, or very strong situations needed to even do something like this. AND other than aster Tikrit, both luke and Dorsk, were burned out from it (dorsk literally).
_________________
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[Methedor]

Scale is supposed to be represented by the weight of the object (or mass in space) and comparing it to the diffculty on the TK chart.

In the films Yoda lifted Lukes X-Wing , but that is the only movie instance I'm aware of and even then it was stationary with regards to engin thrust (we can asume since it was sinking that the movement was a meter per minuet or something miniscule) Though you do bring up an interesting question, the use of TK on Blackholes. They have essentially limitless mass meaning that they should mechanically be unliftable. Maybe a difficulty of 100, dramatic liscense, or just the required use of a Force Point?

To point out, this would generally be done one at a time due to MAP issues. Part of the reason I'm looking at this, other tahn a perivous attempt by my players, is that over the years the game has been developing into a more Anime direction as the "innocence" of the traditional methods have been shedding amoung my players.

"All 3 showed either masters, or very strong situations needed to even do something like this. AND other than aster Tikrit, both luke and Dorsk, were burned out from it (dorsk literally)."
I agree that this would be a master level trick, but some of my players have been known to roll rather high. For example a 47 on 5D6 if i recall correctly.

To be off topic for a second
----
Master Ikirt is awesome and he should of had more development.

I have to admit the level of rolls have made my sesons the ocassional push over as I can't legitamize the existance of superdense or LS resistant materials and the like that often (I also don't like the KOTOR reason of having cortosis blended into all melee weapons, the stuff is supposed to be rare). I've had to come up with alternatives in some cases like having there be critial items behind walls and the like.

[atgxtg]

It does seem like Yoda had to take his time to lift the X-Wing too. Despite his "Size matters not," line. In the RPG mass certainly matters. Maybe instead of increasing the difficulty the way the do in the RAW, they should just up the time 1 round per increase in mass? Only the small stuff seems to move instantly.

[garhkal]

[atgxtg]