Halving Force Skills

[DougRed4]

Hey there, all. Long time, no see!

I've been absent these boards because my real life has been really hectic and my SW game has been on hiatus.

But a post over on rpg.net about D6 led me to promote the game some. And I ended up throwing out some of my Force-related house rules. When it came to how I did halving of Force skills, a poster pointed out that my method (which I believe I got from somebody here) doesn't really work.

I'd originally written:

Force Skills
When computing half value of a Force skill, remove any pips, half the total, round up, and then add the pips back in again.

And this poster wrote:
That's pretty wonky. That means "half" of 1D+2 is 1D+2, but "half" of 2D is only 1D. That happens for every even-valued Force skill: "half" of 5D+2 is 3D+2, but when I up the skill to 6D my "half" value goes down to 3D.

Really what you want is multiply the number of dice by 3, add the number of pips, divide by 2, round up, divide by 3 (treating X 1/3 as XD+1 and X 2/3 as XD+2, minimum 1D).

So what do you all think? He's right that the way I had it doesn't make a lot of sense (I don't remember it ever even coming up in our game). But his method seems overly complicated.

What if I just did things where you removed one pip? So a full D would go to 2 pips, 2 pips would go to 1, and 1 pip would go to 0?
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green

[Naaman]

Why are you halving Force skills to begin with? Doppelganger?

[DougRed4]

The main reason is for Lightsaber Combat, which I've toned down a bit, like this:

Any character may use a lightsaber as a melee weapon, using its normal damage rating of 5D. When a character with the control skill uses a lightsaber, he may add up to ½ of his control skill to the damage. In addition, whenever a character with the sense skill uses a lightsaber to parry an attack, he may add ½ of his sense skill to the total.
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green

[CRMcNeill]

Rather than the method you indicated, I would say:

1). Convert dice to pips, so 1D+2 = 5

2). Divide by 2, rounded up or down (depending on preference), so 5/2 = 2 or 3

3). Convert back to dice (+3 = 1D), so 3 pips = +1D (or +2 if you went with rounding down)


Welcome back, btw.
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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.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[DougRed4]

Thank you, sir.

I crunched a bunch of numbers, and it still was getting a bit too complex for my tastes. I think the following is the simplest and most elegant way of doing it:

Force Skills
When computing half value of a Force skill, round the initial skill up to the nearest even full number (2D, 4D, etc.) before halving it.

Makes it nice, simple, and quick.
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green

[Kytross]

Skills aren't improved during a fight. I would figure out what half the value is in advance and write it down.