A Sith army knife?

[cheshire]

We're playing a KotOR era game, and our group just laid waste to a small group of Sith before they got into lightsaber range. After the battle, one of the characters searched to see if he could find any ID or any useful info on them. What he found was four or five lightsabers.

What he wants to do is take some of the components and give them to our group's techie and scale the lightsabers down. Essentially he wants to turn it from a sword/weapon, into small a cutting tool with a three or four inch blade. (Which, I joked at and called a "Sith army knife.")

First, would you guys allow that sort of thing, and second, if you allowed it, what would the difficulty be in doing this?

[Krayt]

Well, I'd allow it. It doesn't seem over-powered if you scale the DMG down to, say, 4D to 4D+2. I'd set the difficulty as a moderate to hard (dependant on how good they want to make the saber) lightsaber repair roll.

This links to something of the sort 8)
http://rpggamer.org/stats.php?page=d6/d6wristsaber.html

On a side note, maybe you could scale it like a normal melee weapon, Str +1D+2 or some such.
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"Your lack of faith disturbs me." - Vader

[Kayle Skolaris]

Yeah, I'd definitely let that work. It's just such a cool idea and it seems rather harmless to allow. Also, in the Marvel Comics Luke built a 'light dagger' once, which was just a short lightsabre.

[Ankhanu]

Yeah, I see no reason not to allow this, however, I would make it a difficult task to perform, especially since they wouldn't be familiar with HOW the lightsabre works
Perhaps make it VD or Heroic to accomplish, with a fair chance of detrimental failure.

[Jedi Skyler]

I agree with Ankhanu. I mean, it's difficult for a Jedi to do; it ought to be darn near impossible for someone who's not even trained in the Force, where it might actually possibly guide them in construction.

However, if this hasn't been determined yet, these lightsabers could be multi-phase, like Luke's first/Anakin's last lightsaber. That one had the requisite multi-crystal setup so you could dial the blade to whatever length you wanted within its range. For instance, in Splinter of the Mind's Eye, Luke turned his blade down small enough that it served as a jimmy, and he used it to foil a maglock on a door.

One or more of the weapons found could be of this variety, if the GM decided to make rolls to see, provided he allows it. If there is one or more to be had, then of course the character's going to have to be enterprising enough to fiddle with it to see what those knobs on the side do...

[cheshire]

I think that there's going to be ample opportunity for one of the characters to gain a good working knowledge of the inside of lightsabers. The party has been working with two Jedi and assisting them in locating and transporting the remains of an ancient Jedi library.

My character has a really high technical attribute, and since he's a droid, doesn't really sleep all that much. So, basically he's got access to training materials and MIGHT be able to accomplish the task.

[Liam (Gunman) Kissane]

Yeah - I'd allow it.

IMHO though I'm not sure if I might make the task harder for a droid (sorry cheshire), as they are not living creatures per se, and so not swayed by the ebb and flow of the force as a living being might be.

That's just my thoughts.

[Kayle Skolaris]

Oh for frell's sake, a lightsabre is a MACHINE, not a glorified magic sword!!! Of course a droid can build one! During the Clone Wars the Jedi set up entire factories to mass produce the things!

[PsiberDragon]

[Kayle Skolaris]

Okay, Jedi Lightsabres are magic swords... Happy?

Meanwhile, in the Tapani Sector lightfoils are mildly unreliable devices that work on the exact same principles of a lightsabre and require no magic whatsoever.

[Gry Sarth]

Easy there, Kayle. I mostly agree with you, but your attitude is uncalled for.

Granted, non-force sensitives sure can build a lightsaber-type weapon, but as Gunman said, it should be harder and the final result won't be as good. That's why lightfoils are weaker than lightsabers and prone to failure, because they were built by non-Jedi.
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"He's Gry Sarth, of course he has the stats for them."

[cheshire]

So, what are we left with? A higher difficulty with the same result, or a lower difficulty with somewhat shoddy results?

Do you think creating a failure chart is in order?

Basically the GM kind of shrugged her shoulders and asked me "What do you think?" So, basically what we come up with here is what our GM is likely to use.

[Liam (Gunman) Kissane]

I would take the line of Difficult for a Jedi, Very Difficult for Non-Jedi Force Sensatives and Heroic for Non-Force Sensatives and Droids. I would also have the lens reassembly as a 2 day task (as per the Lightsaber Construction pdf on my website).

The character either succeeds, succeeds with complications (or "shoddy results"), or does not succeed at all. Having said that, I'd also allow the character a second go (but not a third - no use flogging a dead horse) if unsuccessful, as long as the rest of the party have the time to stand around twiddling their thumbs.

[Jedi Skyler]

Now, knowing that your character is a droid AND is working with 2 Jedi opens things up a bit...

The Jedi would be able to help with the Force connection bit. Heck, if they are able to construct lightsabers themselves, they might be able to lend advice on how to convert one of the existing sabers to a multi-phase weapon, which would give your character a much more versatile item.

Since he's a droid, he's not going to have to stop to sleep, or refresh himself (other than plugging into a power coupling) so I'd personally lessen the time it would require him. That would be balanced a bit by the fact that he's a droid, and thereby can't make it properly, because he's not in the Force. The Jedi could bring the penalty for this part down some, though, because they can do the fine-tuning to make it a completely usable weapon. In addition, they could train the droid in Lightsaber, much like General Grievous was trained by Dooku. Your droid might require some upgrading in Dexterity to pull this off completely, but you might end up with a really bad@$$ character here...

[Vanion]

I'd allow it, as long as the character has the lightsaber repair skill (which of course has to be taught... usually finding someone who can teach that skill is an adventure all of it's own)

Also, I might require that character be force sensitive... if not, then I would most likely rule that the final results are somewhat shoddy (always a vital complication with a 1 on the wild die and maybe a significantly lower damage code).

On top of all that, I would definately asign it a hefty difficulty number... would be as difficult as turning a heavy blaster pistol into a hold-out blaster.
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