"Broken" Skills

[Liam (Gunman) Kissane]

My friend Fiendrunner was talking to me this week about "broken" skills, and it got me to thinking - what skills have others found to be "broken"

Here's my list, including Fiendrunner's:

1. Brawling Parry and Melee Parry - aren't they covered by Brawling and Melee Combat ??
2. Dodge - how can you specialise against dodging blasters verses anything else ??
3. Vehicle Blasters - shouldn't this be a Mechanical skill ??
4. Vehicle Blasters, Starship Gunnery and Capital Ship Gunnery - how could you possibly specialise in being better at shooting an Ion Cannon verses shooting a Laser Cannon from a computer ?? (For those who might say it reflects knowing where to shoot to cause specific damage to an opponent's vehicle, wouldn't that be knowledge gleaned from the appropriate Technical skills ??).

[Ankhanu]

1) No. being able to hit (and knowing where to hit) and being able to avoid being hit are different (though related) skill sets. If you don't believe, go to a coupe martial arts classes.

2) It's a good idea not to allow Dodge specializations. That or vary the things they have to dodge.

3) Yeah, Perhaps, though it depends on the specific weapon. A lot of weapons covered under Vehicle Blasters are more or less set up like Blaster Artillery, a character physically moving the weapon to fire. Dex makes sense here. The Vehicle mounted weapons fired from cockpit... not so much, Mechanical would make sense. But, I suppose for simplicity's sake, choosing one and going with it is appropriate.

4) Different system types will have different procedures for use, the variation is, true, slight, but it's there. Simple way to solve the dilemma: specialize in specific weapons, rather than broad categories or, don't allow specialization

[Xynar]

[Grimace]

The parry skills aren't really "broken". The designers just chose to list them seperately, indicating that the ability to parry attacks ISN'T incorporated into the Brawling or Melee skills.

Not sure what you mean by dodging and specializing, so no comment there.

Vehicle blasters...I don't see as Mechanical, as you're still manually aiming and firing the weapons. These are for things like turretted weapons, and pintel mounted weapons and such. You still have to manually move, aim and fire it, thus it's not Mechanical.

Finally...specializing in big weaponry.... it seems to me that Star Wars deals with weapons in a World War Two style. People still man the weapons. Han and Luke still sat in the quad laser turrets and fired at the TIEs. Imperial gunners still sat at each turbolaser and shot at the incoming X-Wings and Y-Wings. The rear "gunner" on the snowspeeders still manually aimed and fired the tow cables on the snowspeeders. In fact, the only computer only weapon fired out there in the movies was the Death Star superlaser. The weapons fired by the X-Wings, Y-Wings, TIEs, Imperial Walkers and so on were "computer aided", but as evidenced you still needed skill to be able to hit your target. Since you need skill to hit the target, you can then use specializations to get better in utilizing a particular type of weapon.

Does that help deal with some of the confusion for those skills?

[Gry Sarth]

A wise man once said "If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.", so I don't allow Dodge specializations.
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"He's Gry Sarth, of course he has the stats for them."

[Garrel]

But those would both be Dodge: Thrown Weapons.

Just kidding; while it's true, I don't use Dodge specs either. It seems ultimately smarter to just raise Dodge, anyway.
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[garhkal]

To me the reasoning for allowing dodge specialties, especially energy weapons, is that most people only get into fights with them.. Unless they play with me that is, as i love using the non traditional weapons...
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Krapou]

[Ray]

For the Starship Gunnery and Capital Ship Gunnery...

Well, there's major difference between shooting machine guns and autocannons and "The Big Guns".

[slaughterj]

[scott2978]

[garhkal]

[jmanski]

Dodge specializations, like parry specializations, always kinda made me go "huh?"

If you are good at ducking for cover, why would you be better at ducking for cover versus firearms than blasters? I can see the argument for grenades as there may be a difference in how you evade.

And then there's the "no dodge specializations" rule (forget which ed).
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Blasted rules. Why can't they just be perfect?

[Ankhanu]

[jmanski]

That makes more sense, but why have 2 high specializations when you can have one high melee parry?
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Blasted rules. Why can't they just be perfect?