Jedi Hunter

[Hwayeez]

I always wondered why the enemies of the Jedi didn't use slugthrowers instead of blasters. Maybe bullets could still be blocked by a lightsaber (a cool visual!) but at least they wouldn't be deflected back at the shooter. A scattergun seems like a great weapon to use against a Jedi.

[garhkal]

That's something i keep pushing. YES a lightsaber ight be able to block and totally melt a .357 shell, but the jedi won't be able to avoid all the pellets in a .00 buck shot.
_________________
Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[CRMcNeill]

With nine 00 pellets in a shell of 12ga buckshot, that would generate a coordination bonus of +3D. Apply that to the Gunnery roll to overcome the Jedi’s Lightsaber Parry.

This doesn’t include any additional bonuses for Auto-Fire from a Repeating Shotgun...

Or putting cortosis pellets in the shotgun shells...
_________________
"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

[garhkal]

[Bren]

Rather than parrying the pellets the Jedi should use Telekinesis to stop or deflect the pellets. The question then becomes, how difficult should it be to deflect or stop a shotgun blast with Telekinesis?

Warning answer has some math and is fairly long. Feel free to skip to the end if you just want my answer.

How much energy is in a 12-guage shotgun blast? The energy of a single shotgun pellet is about 172 ft-lbs or 233 Joules. For all 9 pellets hitting the energy is about 2098 Joules.

The way to hit, damage, dodge, and resistance rolls work in Star Wars only the shots that would hit need to be stopped or deflected slightly.
Using Telekinesis it is a Very Easy Alter roll to move a 1 kg object in a straight line a distance of up to 10 meters which means that using the force it is Very Easy to exert 100 Joules of energy (lifting 1 kg, 10 meters in a 1G gravity field). Similarly it is an Easy Alter roll to exert 1000 Joules, Moderate for 10,000 Joules, and Difficult for 100,000 Joules.

Thus the 233J energy from a single pellet is at the very low end of Easy so a roll of 6 or perhaps a 7. To give the shotgun the benefit of the doubt I’ll assume the difficulty is 7.

There are 9 pellets in one shot, so exerting enough energy with Telekinesis to stop the total energy of from 1 to 9 pellets would range from Easy to the very low end of Moderate.

If we treat each pellet in the blast as a separate object, rather than treating the blast as a single object, then there may be up to 9 pellets that would hit which would require a new roll for each additional pellet. So if we treat the pellets separately rather than as a single attack one issue will be to figure out how many of the 9 shots actually hit the target. Since damage is abstracted rather than computed per shot we should use a method to abstract the number of shots hit using the damage roll as a proxy.

The Adostic Arms 8-Guage Shotgun in Cracken’s Rebel Operatives (page 46) does 5D damage. So I’ll assume a 12-guage does 4D damage which has a range of 4-24 points. So all 9 pellets hitting would be 24 points (2.67 pts/pellet) while minimum damage of a single pellet would be say 4 points (4.00 pts/pellet) so we can approximate the number of pellets that hit by dividing the damage result by 3 rounding any fractions up. Average damage is 14 points which approximates being hit by 5 pellets.

Therefore an average blast from a 12-guage shotgun loaded with 00 buckshot will require a Moderate roll to stop the blast (if we treat the shot as a single object) or stopping 5 objects which means a MAP penalty of -4D and a difficulty roll of 7 for each of the 5 pellets. While this seems within the realm of the possible for a moderately skilled Jedi or even a less skilled Jedi using a Force Point it requires a tedious amount of rolling.

We should also consider that the Jedi doesn’t need to completely stop the pellets only to deflect them enough to cause a miss. In that case the roll is even easier since the mass of a single pellet is a mere 53.8 grains or < 0.0035 kilograms. The difficulty for moving a mass that size is at the absolute minimum of Very Easy i.e. a 1 and Telekinesis allows the Jedi to move an object 10 meters without additional penalty. 10 meters is more than enough deflection to cause the shot to completely miss the target. So to deflect the shot instead of needing to roll a 7 the Jedi only needs to roll a 1, which is essentially an automatic success albeit again with a tedious amount of rolling for each additional pellet.

Personally I’d be more apt to abstract the matter by requiring a single roll and increasing the difficulty. One thought is to use the weapon damage as a modifier (similar to what is done with Absorb/Dissipate Energy for a blaster shot). Blasters are much better at penetrating almost all armors than kinetic weapons so I'm guessing the energy of a blaster is higher than that of a gunpowder weapon. Using something like Very Easy plus the damage rolled for deflection and Easy plus the damage rolled for stopping the shot sounds about right to me.

[CRMcNeill]

I'd stipulate that, since TK as an Alter-only power is limited only to objects the Force user can see with the naked eye, they would be unable to perceive bullets or pellets, since they are moving too fast to be seen.

Instead, I'd say that it requires a new power, likely a Control, Sense & Alter one, that allows the Force user to use Telekinesis to deflect or hold bullets, possibly even blaster energy (in the same manner as Kylo Ren in TFA).
_________________
"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

[garhkal]

[Straxus]

Couldn't he just use Absorb/Dissipate Energy?

[Zarn]

No. From the description, it is pretty clear that the energy here is mostly EM energy. Blasters being plasma, plasma assumed as being hot, and the heat being energy that is being absorbed.

[CRMcNeill]

[garhkal]

Could it then get used for a jedi t fall 1000s of feet if he can absorb kinetic energy?
_________________
Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[CRMcNeill]

[Whill]

[CRMcNeill]

Fun Fact: In 1 standard gravity, it takes a falling object ~450 meters (~1,500 feet) to achieve terminal velocity.

By that standard, falling damage should not be calculated the ~450 meter mark. The number will be different for heavy and light gravity worlds.
_________________
"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

[Whill]