Lightsaber With Ionizing Effect

Naaman · Vice Admiral Joined: 29 Jul 2011 Posts: 3190

An idea just popped into my head:

What if some Jedi somewhere built a lightsaber with an ionizing effect. What applications would it have (other than the obvious)?

If someone like Vader were hit with it, would it ruin his suit?

Can we imagine any scenarios in which such a weapon would be preferable to just using a regular lightsaber?

garhkal · Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2015 1:16 am Post subject:

IMO it wouldn't work...
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Naaman · Vice Admiral Joined: 29 Jul 2011 Posts: 3190

But... its Star Wars...

cheshire · Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2015 11:50 am Post subject:

I don't think it's something that I would encourage in my game, but I do know that others have gone that route. For example, there is some effects in KOTOR that allow for additional ion damage to be done with certain lightsaber modifications.

If I were to have it in my game, I would make the ion damage set at a standard damage code, and would not let the person add the Control to the damage roll for the ion damage. Ion damage is already fairly powerful, able to knock out controls and robotics fairly easily, much like stun damage on an organic character. Allowing to up the power, imo, could interrupt game balance.
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garhkal · Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2015 2:59 pm Post subject:

Naaman · Vice Admiral Joined: 29 Jul 2011 Posts: 3190

Whill · Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2015 8:54 pm Post subject:

Volar the Healer · Jedi Joined: 04 Aug 2003 Posts: 664 Location: Arizona, USA

An ionizing lightsaber? Hmmmmmm. In a million worlds...why not?

As a suggestion, how about allowing it to roll damage against one piece of equipment/weapons/sensors/electronics plus an extra one for every 5 points over the 20 required to hit (director's choice) and it would be harmless against life forms.

It'd be different.
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CRMcNeill · Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2015 3:16 am Post subject:

In the old Jedi Handbook, there is an alternate Jedi weapon called the Stun Saber, which (as you may have surmised by now) inflicts stun damage rather than normal damage. It's not too much of a stretch to include an ionizing effect in such a weapon.
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garhkal · Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2015 5:23 pm Post subject:

Which i also felt the same way about.

Do what you want for your own games, but i will never like this sort of option.
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CRMcNeill · Posted: Fri Sep 25, 2015 12:35 am Post subject:

The prequels featured low-powered training lightsabers, with more powerful electromagnetic containment on the blade to reduce damage. Since we don't know exactly how stun energy weapons function, all it would take is a simple sci-fi hand wave to say that training sabers inflict stun and/or ionization damage.
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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

CRMcNeill · Posted: Fri Sep 25, 2015 12:36 am Post subject:

Jedi Skyler · Moff Joined: 07 Sep 2005 Posts: 8440

I can see how some might argue that such a weapon would be overpowering in the game. I mean, there are already a lot of people who believe that Jedi have no place in this game for that very reason.

For such people, I'd suggest that if you're going to have such a weapon, you might consider some options:

1. Have the lightsaber be along the lines of a dual-phase weapon, where phase one is the regular-damage lightsaber blade, and phase two is the ion-based weapon which only does ionization damage;
2. Have the lightsaber do reduced regular damage because energy is being diverted to the ionization effect;
3. Raise difficulty numbers for a lightsaber with this ability, or at least make it much harder to accomplish in some fashion. It will obviously require more parts, which incurs more cost, more time to acquire those parts, and of course, more time to assemble them...and quite feasibly with much more difficulty, since you're adding functions to the lightsaber.

I'm certainly not advocating that all GMs should allow this; after all, being the one in charge, it's YOUR game. Just giving some ideas to add some 'common sense' to those who need some, and to give some drawbacks to throw at the players who want to do this, but perhaps haven't thought it through.

Naaman · Vice Admiral Joined: 29 Jul 2011 Posts: 3190

Quite honestly, I'm javing trouble coming up with any advantages that such a weappn would have over a normal lightsaber, other tha.n perhaps wanting to avoid serious damage to a droid or speeder or some such while still being able to disable it.

In most scenarios I can imagine, it males no difference whether a droid is destroyed or disabled...

Jedi Skyler · Moff Joined: 07 Sep 2005 Posts: 8440

That's yet another point; a lightsaber in and of itself is a highly notable weapon. Modify it so that it does ion damage, and you're changing a number of things about it...most notably, appearance and sound; that's going to make whoever wields such a weapon stand out even more than they already would...

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