Creatures and Scale

[garhkal]

Now, let's get some hippo type critters in SW!
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Naaman]

In case anyone cares, it seems like a move of 12 (which is being derived from the max recorded straight line speed of elephants) should come with some limitations.

For example, if the aforementioned human were being chased by an elephant sized creature, the human could easily out maneuver the creature by making tight and rapid directional changes.

A human (or other similarly sized animal) can change direction with less speed reduction than a 15,000-pound animal with significantly less joint flexibility.

For this reason, I'd actually be inclined to do one of the following:

1) Set the bantha's move at less than 10, and allow all-out movement to receive a scaling bonus, or,

2) Set the bantha's movement above 10, and impose a scaling penalty on "maneuverability" checks when making running rolls, even in easy terrain.

Given that scale modifiers are supposed to represent the pros and cons of size differentials, it seems like they should apply to chasing/racing, as well.
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All About Lightsabers: Designing, Building, and Fighting

[CRMcNeill]

[Whill]

There doesn't necessarily need to be any special modifiers or rules to address this.

[garhkal]

[CRMcNeill]

My thought there was, if the larger Scale pursuer wishes to make the same Maneuver as the smaller Scale target, they apply the Scale Difference as a penalty to their Skill Roll, but the penalty rolls off at a rate of 2D per round. So, if a Bantha were Speeder-Scale (where I plan to put it), it would suffer a -4D penalty to "chase" a Character-Scale target, but this would be reduced to -2D the following round, and 0D the round after that.
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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

[garhkal]

That sounds good.. So what would you rate say a banta at? Speeder? What of a T-rex? Should it be walker?
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[CRMcNeill]

[garhkal]

so if a banta, and 't-rex' are the same size, then there wouldn't be any movement issues with one keeping up/changing direction with the other, as they'd be the same scale.
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[CRMcNeill]

[CRMcNeill]

So, I'm reconsidering the list I came up with. The issue I'm having is, despite the fact that the various creatures seen on Dagobah or Yavin or Bespin are relatively well known to fans of the films, they will not be all that known or widespread (if at all) to actual inhabitants of the SWU. The whole reason in-setting for planets like Yavin or Dagobah is that they are out-of-the-way backwaters that nobody has any reason to go to, so why would their wildlife be something PCs are in any way likely to encounter. The counterargument is that the GM could use them as representative of the life forms one is likely to encounter in a swamp or the atmosphere of a gas giant.

So should I pare down the list to just cover animals known for being relatively commonplace in the galaxy, or do stats for the whole list, even the ones that will be effectively unknown in-universe?
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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

[Dr. Bidlo]

I think you should provide the updates stats for all the creatures on your list. Even if characters are unlikely to know what they are, if the do encounter them, the GM needs the stats. If it is a creature known from the films but is otherwise unknown to the characters, the GM should try to describe it in a way that makes it sound unknown, mysterious, and possibly terrifying. I had a GM use ghouls in a fantasy RPG once and I had no idea what I was facing but wow were they terrifying. As soon as a knew they were ghouls, the mystery was gone as I recalled my encyclopedic knowledge of their stats and special rules... so, all the better to have mysterious creatures at Speeder or Walker scale. It may very well keep them guessing what the heck it could be.

[Whill]