Conversions - The Clone Wars Campaign Guide

[Gry Sarth]

Seeing as I have some days off, I'm going through this book with a passion, converting things to D6. I'm almost done with starships, vehicles, aliens and creatures...

If anyone would like to give me a hand with weapons, equipment, force powers and droids, they are most welcome.

Right now I'm looking at the Malevolence (Subjugator-class Heavy Cruiser), and I'd appreciate some feedback on how to handle its super ion weapon.

This is what I have so far:

[Lostboy]

Wow that is one mean gun. You might want to think of it as a very wide angle beam or cone shaped blast, still that with fire power of that magnitude i cant see any ship with powerful enough generators to power even one let alone two.

[Gry Sarth]

Well, that's really the point. This is a superweapon. From what we saw, if it hits you, you're a gonner, doesn't matter if you're a Y-Wing or a Venator Star Destroyer. That's why I think it's important to establish the mechanics by which you might attempt to get out of its destructive path, the only way to avoid becoming dead in space. One thing that sprung to mind was the Deck Sweeper hand blaster, but I'm not sure how to translate it into a space battle...
_________________
"He's Gry Sarth, of course he has the stats for them."

[cheshire]

I'll have to look at this thing when I get my hands on a copy of the book. This thing is just too powerful a gun. I mean, the 1/4 fire rate helps. But it really doesn't explain why they weren't able to resurrect a couple of these during the rebellion, and neutralize a fleet of star destroyers.

Personally, I think that some of the accuracy of the conversion may have to be sacrificed for game balance.
_________________
__________________________________
Before we take any of this too seriously, just remember that in the middle episode a little rubber puppet moves a spaceship with his mind.

[Lostboy]

Agreed.

[Lostboy]

This gun will work best as a plot device and thus it operates on plot device physics, i belive it was originaly introduced as a plot device, am i being to subtle with my theme.

Oh it's massive power might mean it was made of the super material plot-deviceum.

[cheshire]

I just want to clarify, I'm not digging the ship, but I'm not saying anything about your conversion itself, Gry. I'm going to reserve any final judgment until I can actually see the ship in the book in its proper context.
_________________
__________________________________
Before we take any of this too seriously, just remember that in the middle episode a little rubber puppet moves a spaceship with his mind.

[Grimace]

I, too, would suggest junking a direct conversion. That damage alone is ridiculous. As cheshire said, it's not your fault Gry, it's just the stats that you're converting from are faulty so the conversion suffers.

If I were you, I would drop the damage to maybe around that of the Planetary Defender, which is also Capital scale. Keep the delay on there. And then use the radius of "all ships within 5 Space units of the point of target. That gives you five to the right and left (above and below too if you use 3-D) which covers the 10 you were talking about. Still an enormously powerful weapon, but not quite the ridiculous nature that it is right now.

And if you find the crew outright silly, which I do as well....then change it! Direct conversion of things that are outlandish can break the "balance" of something as quickly as creating something outlandish on your own. If it makes more sense, which it certainly does, to have a crew of more than 1 for the weapon, then write it in. If it irks you because you're "converting" it, then put in a little * and say that "changes were made to reflect a more reasonable set of stats for this item than what a direct conversion would provide".

[Gry Sarth]

Thanks for all the feedback. Yeah, I'll surely change that crew rating, to something with two figures. The stat block I posted is not my final assesment of this weapon's conversion, it's just the result of direct conversion so you guys could get a taste for what's written in the book. Of course it needs to be processed a bit.

However, I don't think the damage is ludicrous, this is a superweapon, after all. With all the flamboyancy and fallibility of one. The Eclipse Star Destroyer, only over twice the size of this one, has a Superlaser that does 8D Death Star Scale damage! That's 20D Capital Scale. So, seeing as this Ion weapons has been shown to reliably disable Star Destroyers with a single shot, I feel its damage shoud be close to that of the Alliance's Anti-Orbital Ion Cannon from TESB (12D).
_________________
"He's Gry Sarth, of course he has the stats for them."

[cheshire]

Okay, so this is a rather unique ship rather than being one of several thousand in the fleet? That would make more sense why it would be so high. Yet another reason why I want to see the book.
_________________
__________________________________
Before we take any of this too seriously, just remember that in the middle episode a little rubber puppet moves a spaceship with his mind.

[Grimace]

While it's true the Eclipse had the super laser, it was a front line fire weapon only. And it didn't "splash" with it's effect. This ion weapon is actually substantially more powerful than the superlaser. 16D ion damage that ignores the shields is actually more potent of a weapon than a 20D (capital) weapon that has to contend with the shields of the ships. Plus, the superlaser affects one ship at a time. This ion weapon has the ability to affect literally dozens of ships all at the same time. A "blast" radius of 10, even one of 5, that affects every ship with 16D ion damage will leave entire FLEETS disabled in one shot.

The V-150 Planetary Defender has 12D damage and is stuck on a planet because it takes such a large area to house the power generator. It affects only one target at a time. It was pretty effective against a Star Destroyer! The new "super weapon" is 25% better than the Planetary Defender in damage, and it affects an enourmously large area with that better damage. Plus, there are TWO of them on this ship. Superweapon or not, that's ridiculous. That's like saying the Eclipse should have had 5 turreted superlasers on it so it could fire in any direction.

[obidancer]

I'm with LostBoy on this one.
The Malovence's ion cannons can disable a fleet in one shot. Well the Death Star can destroy an entire planet with one shot, and if my memory is correct, can't the Suncrusher destroy an entire system with a shot?

So is the life and purpose of a Super-Weapon. Comparing it to heavy and powerful artillerie weapons doesn't make sense, it's just not the same class or use.

Super-Weapon: One-of-a-kind (ok, or two maybe... with a little brother somewhere), uber super powerfull device that destroy lots and and important things so to urge the heroes to come and destroy it as fast as possible.

I'd say we don't even need dice, but since WEG did for the SuperLaser, we can do it for the SuperIon Cannon; let's keep it uber super powerful so the heroes WILL rush to destroy it... oh, Anakin did it already? darn.
_________________
www.obidancer.com - RPG Character Portraits and Art.
Malicia "Rogue" Darkholmes - Character in Alcon's Thractin Campaign

[Xynar]

Why not make it a Death Star scale ion weapon with similar rules to a superlaser as far as total output and energy generation?
_________________
Xynar
The Great Adventurer

[jmanski]

[cheshire]