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Bobknob
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Joined: 11 Mar 2016
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 Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2016 3:46 pm Post subject: Dumb Newbie Question about Lightsaber Combat |
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Is this really as good as it seems or am I just misunderstanding it? First it jacks up your parry and attack to a crazy high level(Lightsaber+Sense). It makes you able to one-shot most people(Lightsaber Damage+Control). You only have to roll parry once because it is a reaction skill and that is the new target number to hit you by any blaster or melee attack in that round. Literally 500 people can shoot at you in one round and you can parry them all due to one roll?
If this is all true, how do I make combat more dangerous and interesting for someone with that ability? Grenades? Slugthrowers? Sith with Lightsaber Combat? |
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Naaman
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| Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2016 4:21 pm Post subject: |
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There are many problems with LSC. You uave mentioned a few here.
Ironically, at low levels, a Jedi is a rather pathetic combatant ESPECIALLY when trying to use LSC because the power imposes multiple action penalties, which means that in order to benefit from it, the character must have at least 3D in both control and sense... but making that moderate control roll ain't easy on 3D.
Unless the player is physically rolling 10D or more (which would require a gross combined skill of 12D) then combined fire should be a fairly easy way to challenge the character.
Also remember: when fighting mooks, the relative power level between PCs id almost irrelevant. A blaster rifle's 5D damage should get the job done anyway, so rolling 8 or 9D isn't going to make the fight much shorter (a single hit still only takes out one bad guy).
As for the BBEG, well... why shouldn't he be a challenge? Grenades, flechette rounds, flamethrowers, force chokes, cortosis, etc... all of these can at least challenge-if not outright negate--the Jedi's melee prowess.
There are dozens of house rule revisions for LSC on the forums here as well. You may find a solution that you like. |
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atgxtg
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| Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2016 6:24 pm Post subject: |
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Yeah, like Naaman said there are quite a few problems, and also like he said LSC starts off as more of a problem than it's worth, thanks to MAPs.
Generally, if the Jedi has Force below 3D the power is fairly worthless. Even up to until the Jedi hits around 5D in his Force skills, Lightsaber combat hurts him more than it helps. Somewhere around the 6-7D range the power kinda kicks into overdrive.
One gray area he missed was if MAPs affect the Lightsaber skill twice, and drop damage because Sense and Control are affected.
First edtion handled things a little differently. |
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cheshire
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| Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2016 7:38 pm Post subject: |
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| atgxtg wrote: |
One gray area he missed was if MAPs affect the Lightsaber skill twice, and drop damage because Sense and Control are affected.
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The devil is in these details when you're trying to challenge your LSC PC's. First, do remember how those MAPs stack when used with other skills. Yes, you've got your parry covered, yes you've got damage covered. But parry isn't going to do you one lick of good if the NPC is firing from a grenade launcher. You're going to have to use dodge. That's another MAP. If they want to climb a rope, swing on a vine, dash across an icy bridge, those are additional MAPs, and the players may have to make choices in terms of whether they want to leave LSC up or not. And that's even assuming that they're high enough that they want to bother, because you're subtracting from both your Sense and Control rolls when you're doing your attack, parry, and damage (as has been previously mentioned).
In terms of challenging them, make sure you distinguish between your low-risk encounters and your serious challenges. Yes, if a group has a Jedi with 5D or 6D in their C,S, & A, then 10 Stormtroopers will go down like the shiny white bowling pins they are. Though the real challenges are going to come when 15 enemies are combining fire. Or when you're using smart villains. I one time set up an encounter where a high-level foe had mooks 100 yards away firing grenade launchers at the Jedi to keep them pinned down. Also, if they're using slug throwers at range, then it's going to be difficult for the Jedi to close range on them before the bad guys pull out and try to disappear. Give your mid-range bad guy phrik armor, and they have to hit a higher difficulty to jab him in the joints. Use flame-throwers to give the Jedi an area effect to tangle with. I'm sure that a Stockli Spray Stick would give a Force-user something to think about.
If you're looking for BBEG, climactic fights, then design them to be more than just the lightsaber comes out, it goes in the bad guy, and then it's done. The best thing to come out of Episode III was showing GMs how to use the environment to make things more interesting. Fighting a guy is one thing, fighting him over a lake of lava while the whole platform is going down is quite another. Episode II showed us a fight where a whole factory is full of environmental hazards: welding arms, molten metal, active machinery, all of those things are a gold mine of ideas for making the fight about something more than just the weapon. So, get creative, turn off the gravity, start flooding the submarine cruise liner, use solar flares and decaying orbits. But use them selectively for the big climactic encounters.
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garhkal
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| Posted: Fri Apr 01, 2016 12:37 am Post subject: |
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| atgxtg wrote: |
One gray area he missed was if MAPs affect the Lightsaber skill twice, and drop damage because Sense and Control are affected.
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To ME it should. If you are taking 4 actions (-3d from all) it should be both your LS skill itself AND both your Sense and Control abilities it's coming from. Just like regular joe schmoe has it coming off both his blaster and his dodge skill..
IE Sidd McSith, has Lightsaber 6d+2 with 5d+1 Control and 4d+1 sense.
If he has LS combat up, along with say resist stun or control pain, that right there is 3 actions, meaning his LS drops to 4d+2, 3d+1 Con and 2d+1 sen. If he is going to parry once, and attack once, that is another 2 actions dropping his LS skill down to 2d+2, and he only now has +1 pip left from LS combat being up due to him from the Sense skill.
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Bobknob
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| Posted: Fri Apr 01, 2016 2:57 am Post subject: |
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| If you keep Lightsaber Combat "up" you constantly have 2 MAPS the whole time? |
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Naaman
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| Posted: Fri Apr 01, 2016 4:03 am Post subject: |
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| Yes. It is, IMO a stupid power. I think the idea is true to the concept, but it is poorly executed. |
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Naaman
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| Posted: Fri Apr 01, 2016 4:41 am Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: |
To ME it should. If you are taking 4 actions (-3d from all) it should be both your LS skill itself AND both your Sense and Control abilities it's coming from. Just like regular joe schmoe has it coming off both his blaster and his dodge skill..
IE Sidd McSith, has Lightsaber 6d+2 with 5d+1 Control and 4d+1 sense.
If he has LS combat up, along with say resist stun or control pain, that right there is 3 actions, meaning his LS drops to 4d+2, 3d+1 Con and 2d+1 sen. If he is going to parry once, and attack once, that is another 2 actions dropping his LS skill down to 2d+2, and he only now has +1 pip left from LS combat being up due to him from the Sense skill. |
The problem I have with garhkal's interpretation is that penalizes everything more than once. Your mileage may vary, and that is the beauty of forums like this: there is a lot of interpretations to choose from or modify to your liking.
Keeping a power up is like declaring at the beginning of each round that you're taking (in this case) two additional actions. For simplicity's sake, lets just say all of a character's skills are at 10D for the example.
Activating LSC adds the sense dice to lightsaber, and the control dice to damage. So, 20D to attack/parry, and 15D damage. However, two actions were taken, (this is where garhkal differs in interpretation).
He says that all skills, lightsaber, sense, control, dodge, brawling, first aid... etc, etc... take a -2D MAP.
So in his interpretation, lightsaber is now 8D, sense is now 8D and control is now 8D. So according to him, when you attack, you get: 16D to attack, 13D to damage.
If you make another attack, they all get penalized again. So that means, with two attacks, you're looking at another -D to all rolls (your original attack -1D, plus the "keeping up" of -2D). So in order to take that "fourth" action, you have to apply -2D from being up, plus the -1D from the attack. Now, all skills are reduced to 7D and then you add them up. So one attack with a lightsaber is 16D, but two attacks would be rolled at 14D, instead of 15D and damage becomes 12D. In other words, his math assumes there are no parenthesis in the equation, so his order of operations is different.
I say, you add everything up (so 20D), and then apply MAPs (in truth, our group doesn't even apply MAPs for powers being kept up, since we don't like the book keeping. We just fight harder bad guys instead). Anyway, 20D to start, then, take away 2D for keeping the power up. So 18D. Then, additional actions continue to subtract from there. I tend to think that this was the way that the designers intended it to be. Otherwise, if garhkal's system is used, I'd see absolutely no point in using LSC if you want to actually win the fight. Just be a "Jedi" who uses a blaster like everyone else. Saves a lot of headaches, and you don't have to worry about building a lightsaber (so you're wasting less CPs on the lightsaber repair skill that could be put into blaster anyway).
Let's use more realistic numbers and assume two attacks. All skills at 6D.
So that means that if you make just one attack, then you're looking at a total of 8D (since all are penalized by the keeping up -2D, sense becomes 4D and lightsaber becomes 4D. Damage is 9D). Now let's declare two attacks instead of 1 using garhkal's system.
All skills lose 3D, bringing all down to 3D. So for two attacks we are rolling 6D and damage is 8D.
Now, keep in mind, we are looking at a character who has 6D in sense and control, which, in my best estimation makes them a well rounded Jedi Knight (well beyond even an advanced padawan). For most of the game, you're dealing with die codes in the 1D-4D range, which, ultimately makes LSC more or less useless if you penalize everything each time you take an action. The power becomes pointless except for NPC Jedi Masters and their ilk.
I think the general consensus around here is that you should house rule it IF it becomes a problem for your group (for us, it was never a problem, and like I said, we didn't even apply the MAPs... and my character was usually the only Jedi in the group). We have even played games where the individual skills made it to double digits, and still not a problem (rolling 20+ dice in the final battle). |
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garhkal
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| Posted: Fri Apr 01, 2016 3:24 pm Post subject: |
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| Bobknob wrote: | | If you keep Lightsaber Combat "up" you constantly have 2 MAPS the whole time? |
Yup. Just like if you have LS combat, Danger sense, Control pain and Resist stun up that is 5 actions right there, before you even GET to attack or defend.
| Namman wrote: | | The problem I have with garhkal's interpretation is that penalizes everything more than once. Your mileage may vary, and that is the beauty of forums like this: there is a lot of interpretations to choose from or modify to your liking. |
That is true Namman, you are getting hit on all skills/powers, but isn't that what is normally done?
I use control pain, Ab dis energy twice, dodge once and shoot twice. That is 6 actions total, for 5d of my dodge, blaster, and Control.. Why shouldn't LS combat also take that 5d off control/sense along with the LS skill if say instead of the Ab/dis energy it was being active??
| Namman wrote: | | I say, you add everything up (so 20D), and then apply MAPs (in truth, our group doesn't even apply MAPs for powers being kept up, since we don't like the book keeping. We just fight harder bad guys instead). Anyway, 20D to start, then, take away 2D for keeping the power up. So 18D. Then, additional actions continue to subtract from there. I tend to think that this was the way that the designers intended it to be. Otherwise, if garhkal's system is used, I'd see absolutely no point in using LSC if you want to actually win the fight. Just be a "Jedi" who uses a blaster like everyone else. Saves a lot of headaches, and you don't have to worry about building a lightsaber (so you're wasting less CPs on the lightsaber repair skill that could be put into blaster anyway). |
ANd that is something i see a lot. Cause people DON;T use rules as wrote, such as in adnd, encumbrance or NPC reactions, they start seeing strangenesses crop in. If you don't MAP for kept up powers, of course jedi will start making combats easier/quicker unless you also toss more enemy force users into the mix, which THEN can be an insta kill if that dark jedi ever slices up any Non force using PC..
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Naaman
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| Posted: Fri Apr 01, 2016 6:39 pm Post subject: |
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Well, according to films, ANYONE hit AT ALL by a lightsaber instantly loses the fight, so, I don't have a problem with lightsabaers dealing 1,000,000D damage. Beyond a certain point, it doesn't really matter how many dice are rolled, since, IMO, a lightsaber should be a one-hit fight ender.
As for NPCs, well, the GM can fudge anything he wants. So, again, I don't have a problem there. RAW, its not like newbie Jedi are even useful in combat. By the time the Jedi has enough skill for it to matter, mooks should be going down like flies, anyway.
The films totally blow away the notion that LSC would even be a "MAP" inducing thing. We see padawan learners using their lightsabers to deflect blasters and kill things, make attacks and use force pushes to knock around multiple targets and have danger sense "up" all at the same time. |
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cheshire
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| Posted: Fri Apr 01, 2016 7:48 pm Post subject: |
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Well... most of the time. Luke winged Vader and only made him madder, and Kylo Ren got nicked a few times without going down completely, IIRC.
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garhkal
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| Posted: Fri Apr 01, 2016 11:44 pm Post subject: |
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| Naaman wrote: |
As for NPCs, well, the GM can fudge anything he wants. So, again, I don't have a problem there. |
What exactly are you saying there?? Treat the NPC's stats as normal, till they slice up a non force user, so just 'fudge' it so the pc doesn't die/??
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Naaman
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| Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2016 5:38 am Post subject: |
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| cheshire wrote: | | Well... most of the time. Luke winged Vader and only made him madder, and Kylo Ren got nicked a few times without going down completely, IIRC. |
I dont remember Kylo Ren's fights in any detail... but then, if he did, it was by characters with 0 training, so, by RAW, it would have been only 5D damage anyway.
As for Vader, doesn't he have cortosis armor or some such? |
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Naaman
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| Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2016 5:39 am Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | Naaman wrote: |
As for NPCs, well, the GM can fudge anything he wants. So, again, I don't have a problem there. |
What exactly are you saying there?? Treat the NPC's stats as normal, till they slice up a non force user, so just 'fudge' it so the pc doesn't die/?? |
If its appropriate for the story, then yes. Plot armor applies both directions in storytelling. |
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garhkal
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| Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2016 4:15 pm Post subject: |
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But pcs in a game shouldn't HAVE plot armor. That is more for if you are writing a story...
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