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Off the wall player actions
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 03, 2006 6:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Maybe it might have ruined it, but when you play with unstable explosives, that is what might happen.
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daphnebluestrat
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 03, 2006 11:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

If you're not trying to run a cinematic sort of game, then yeah, that sort of thing can happen.

But if you are...

I dunno. I see where you're coming from, for sure...and you DEFINITELY don't want the players to think they're invincible. But what, really, is the POINT of making one of the detonators go off, besides being either a. spiteful or b. super-realistic, in which case "rigging the reactor to explode" probably would have ended their lives/careers long ago, since they were dealing with VERY high-powered, super-volatile energy-generating equipment?
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Pel
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 04, 2006 5:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That's exactly how we play. If it's a decent idea and it's cinematic, we go with it. Bad ideas are also dealt with in suitably dramatic fashion. 8)
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Firehawk0220
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 5:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

daphnebluestrat wrote:
garhkal wrote:


Pel wrote:
Having a sudden spark of improvisation, I removed several thermal detonators from my pack and began to juggle them. After several tense Dexterity rolls (I didn't have the juggling skill at that point) I finally dropped one which activated as it hit the floor. Everyone looked at me. I calmly asked, "Someone going to get that?" and continued juggling.

The pilot dove from his seat, deactivated the thermal detonator, handed it to the Wookiee, and promised to fly us anywhere we wanted if someone could make me stop juggling the thermals. We escaped with seconds to spare.


Had i been the gm, i would have had you rolling a die for each TD, to see if your 'jolting of them' set one off.


haha, no way...I can just *imagine* the twenty seconds of gametime when his character was calmly juggling high-powered explosives, only to drop one and equally calmly request that somebody pick it up.

Now if, after Pel dropped the thermie, nobody had tried to get it and shut it off, then by all means have it go off and end their miserable little lives.

But had the game-master ruled that one of them went off simply because of a failed DEX roll , it would totally have ruined the cinematic effect of the scene and discouraged the players from ever doing anything that insane again.


Just dropping a detonator shouldn't set it off. The movement of the switch has to be deliberate. I wouldn't think anything that advanced would be that unstable. We aren't talking about wet TNT. We are talking about an electronic explosive. The thing shouldn't be capable of detonating when dropped.
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Gry Sarth
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 5:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I agree. At most, it could hit the ground in just the right way that the switch is activated, but that still means you have a little time to deactivate it.
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 06, 2006 2:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Gry Sarth wrote:
I agree. At most, it could hit the ground in just the right way that the switch is activated, but that still means you have a little time to deactivate it.


Depends on what it moved to on that activation...

As to the stability... I posted a while ago, where it showed in several books that baridium is highly unstable. I do not see anything in the TD description countering that.
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Pel
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 06, 2006 12:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thermal detonators are extemely unstable due to their baradium charges, just like Garhkal said. We've always played them that way to great success. After all, a 10D explosion in a baseball-sized package has to come with some sort of drawback, otherwise nobody would use grenades. It's practically a pocket nuke. Makes for a great fastball, though. 8)
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Gry Sarth
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 06, 2006 12:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, well, it costs about 10 times as much as a grenade. At 2.000 creds a pop, it's not something you can just sprinkle anywhere you go....

I'm glad my GM is not so sensitive about thermals and other explosives setting off accidentally, otherwise this character of mine wouldn't have lasted long....


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Pel
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 06, 2006 12:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Very true. Cost has never been much of a factor in our campaigns, but then we tend to use thermals sparingly. After all, it *might* go off before it's supposed to. More cinematic that way!

To continue our thread, we were playing one night, and things were running a bit slowly. For reasons I am still unable to fathom, our adventure just wasn't "clicking". Everyone was bored. Since I abhor boredom, my bounty hunter (previously mentioned juggler) arrived at an elegant solution: I shot the hyperdrive with a DEMP gun while it was active.

Everyone's face paled, our other GM stared at me, then burst into great peals of laughter and reached for the Otherspace adventure. We were no longer bored. Mission accomplished! Laughing
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Jedi Skyler
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 06, 2006 3:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Gry Sarth wrote:
Yeah, well, it costs about 10 times as much as a grenade. At 2.000 creds a pop, it's not something you can just sprinkle anywhere you go....

I'm glad my GM is not so sensitive about thermals and other explosives setting off accidentally, otherwise this character of mine wouldn't have lasted long....




Laughing Laughing Laughing roflmbo!!!
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Hellcat
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 07, 2006 12:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Firehawk0220 wrote:
daphnebluestrat wrote:
garhkal wrote:


Pel wrote:
Having a sudden spark of improvisation, I removed several thermal detonators from my pack and began to juggle them. After several tense Dexterity rolls (I didn't have the juggling skill at that point) I finally dropped one which activated as it hit the floor. Everyone looked at me. I calmly asked, "Someone going to get that?" and continued juggling.

The pilot dove from his seat, deactivated the thermal detonator, handed it to the Wookiee, and promised to fly us anywhere we wanted if someone could make me stop juggling the thermals. We escaped with seconds to spare.


Had i been the gm, i would have had you rolling a die for each TD, to see if your 'jolting of them' set one off.


haha, no way...I can just *imagine* the twenty seconds of gametime when his character was calmly juggling high-powered explosives, only to drop one and equally calmly request that somebody pick it up.

Now if, after Pel dropped the thermie, nobody had tried to get it and shut it off, then by all means have it go off and end their miserable little lives.

But had the game-master ruled that one of them went off simply because of a failed DEX roll , it would totally have ruined the cinematic effect of the scene and discouraged the players from ever doing anything that insane again.


Just dropping a detonator shouldn't set it off. The movement of the switch has to be deliberate. I wouldn't think anything that advanced would be that unstable. We aren't talking about wet TNT. We are talking about an electronic explosive. The thing shouldn't be capable of detonating when dropped.


It's the GM's choice. However, according to the Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology, page 42, thermal detonator entry:

Quote:
Baradium is dangerously unstable, sometimes triggering a fusion reaction if the detonator is jarred or expossed to excessive heat. Detonators have been known to exploded when dropped or thrown through the air or for no apparent reason.

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renault
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 6:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

lessee, some favorites-
the tongue tied mechanic who engineered half a dozen pitdroids into a personal army that folds away for convenient storage under your bed ala chuck norris' total gym

Not sure if this one was house ruled or not, but I use a drink in my campaigns called blue velvet, which provides a bizarre, seemingly force-related out of body experience, which I have described as seeing your own spectre floating above your body, attached by a thin silver cord. a particularly drunk bounty hunter, upon seeing this, asked if his spectral self had his spectral equipment. like an @$$ I agreed that was acceptable. whipping out his vibro blade he cut his ankle cord.

best I could come up with was a very convoluted explanation about how this was a a chemically induced representation of his inner psyche's struggle with his own dual nature, resulting in a massive aneurism.

just never cut the cord man
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renault
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 6:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

another one I had to wing pretty badly- maybe I could get some input on how someone else would have handled this as well. in the middle of a desperate flight out of an imperial garrison, the pcs took a hit to their rear thrusters, blowing their sublight and repulsors. I thought I had them dead to rights. Then daedrek rowe (the bane of my gamemastering) decided it would be a good idea to rip the sensor relay/control board out of the hyperdrive and punch the sucker into hyperspace whether they were sitting on a gravity well or not.

best I could come up with, with no sensors come no navigation, and thus no hyperspace coordinates, meaning you're straight line jumping only. as far as the results of the jump, lets just say ryloth got a new canyon and the players got a new ship (and a new npc, they broke another one dammit)
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Gry Sarth
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 6:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

There are two things about hyperdrives. Coordinates and gravity. If you don't have jump coordinates, you can still make a blind jump, which is extremely risky even in short hops, however it's a tempting option when you're just about to die anyway. To perform a blind jump you have to bypass your navigational computer with some tech skills (or maybe with a very lucky yank at the control board?). However, if you're in a gravity well (be it because you're too close to a planet or one such big orbital body, or an interdictor's gravity well), there's just no way to enter hyperspace, no matter what you do. There's simply no gateway into it from a place with gravity.
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Krayt
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 8:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The most off the wall my group has ever dome while GMing was something like this:

After a long fight with stormies in an Imp base , the characters came to a dead end. The jedi cut through the wall and went through. I decided it was an large fan that was horazontal and blowing (towards it, as I told the characters). One PC who had played Jedi Knight Acadamy decided to jump in, thinking it would push him up Shocked (he didn't figure out that sucking in ment TOWARD the fan for some reason) he went in, and I had a nice time describing the juices that now covered the wall. About two seconds later (all the time they gave to mourning), the PCs just used their assencion guns (which the dead PC had too), and repelled up to the next floor.

That was just stupid.

Also, one character later decided to throw a detonator (thermal) at a group of storm commandos, even though he had no grenade skill and it was a high gravity planet. He rolled his DEX, and made a big fumble (two 1s on the wild die in a row). He dropped it at his feet, and blew himself up. They managed to save her, but she had to be borgified. She later got killed by another detonator during a firefight with a bounty hunter.

That was the last any PC saw of thermal dtonators for a while. Wink
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