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CRMcNeill
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 Posted: Sun May 03, 2015 11:46 pm Post subject: Difficulty of Parrying a Blaster Bolt |
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Oddly enough, I can't seem to find a specific reference in the RAW as to how difficult it is to parry a blaster bolt with a Lightsaber. I've always gone with a flat difficulty (so long as Lightsaber Combat is up), as it seems to me that the bolt itself will be no more or less difficult to parry just because of the accuracy with which it was fired. However, I have encountered a gamer or two over the years who felt that parrying a blaster bolt should be an opposed roll (Lightsaber vs. the Shooter's Blaster roll).
Personally, I think film evidence backs me up, as we see Jango Fett in AOTC firing a barrage of blasts at Obi-Wan as opposed to one extremely well placed shot.
Thoughts?
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Thx1138
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| Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 12:11 am Post subject: |
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| Well the prequel trilogy was insane with blaster bolt deflection, I mean TPM had more blaster bolt deflection than the entire original trilogy. That being said I feel that a flat difficulty is just fine because it makes it much more in tune with the cinematic aspect of the game. If you think about it, blaster bolt deflection is the first thing they teach in lightsaber 101. |
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Savar
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| Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 12:17 am Post subject: Re: Difficulty of Parrying a Blaster Bolt |
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| crmcneill wrote: | Oddly enough, I can't seem to find a specific reference in the RAW as to how difficult it is to parry a blaster bolt with a Lightsaber. I've always gone with a flat difficulty (so long as Lightsaber Combat is up), as it seems to me that the bolt itself will be no more or less difficult to parry just because of the accuracy with which it was fired. However, I have encountered a gamer or two over the years who felt that parrying a blaster bolt should be an opposed roll (Lightsaber vs. the Shooter's Blaster roll).
Personally, I think film evidence backs me up, as we see Jango Fett in AOTC firing a barrage of blasts at Obi-Wan as opposed to one extremely well placed shot.
Thoughts? |
s&e lightsaber combat power, the difficulty to parry is the roll the attacker made in the example given. |
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 12:48 am Post subject: Re: Difficulty of Parrying a Blaster Bolt |
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| Savar wrote: | | s&e lightsaber combat power, the difficulty to parry is the roll the attacker made in the example given. |
Yeah, I just found that, too. And while it is consistent with WEG rules, I can't help but feel it is wrong. I mean, how exactly is a character's high roll on a blaster shot going to make it harder for the Jedi to parry? The Jedi will still have his precognitive warning in the Force, the blaster bolt will be obeying whatever (fictional) laws of physics that govern it, it won't be moving faster or trying to dodge around the blade, etc. etc. And the prequels and TCW are pretty obvious about non-Force users taking on Jedi by barraging them with shots (preferably from multiple sources).
So what method would you use, everyone?
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griff
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| Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 1:05 am Post subject: |
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Page 16 1e the sense skill is rolled be the character with the lightsaber plus the roll of the shooters blaster roll, the better the shot from the shooter the easier to block. Difficulty seems to be arbitrary (gm's decision). I would inverse the range difficulty, the closer the more difficult.
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shootingwomprats
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| Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 5:11 am Post subject: |
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If lightsaber combat is "up" when the character is attacked, as reactive defense he declares he is using his lightsaber parry. This still counts as an additional action. Roll lightsaber parry, this becomes the new target number for all enemies using ranged weapons.
If the Jedi wants to redirect blaster bolts this is also considered reactive and an action. Rolling Control for the skill roll, compare to task difficulty of the range or the targets dodge (if any). If the total is equal to or higher, he has successfully redirected the energy bolt.
As a house rule, if the character is trying to parry an energy blast there are no benefits for scale. They are trying to stand its way and smack it away or back at the target. Assess a negative modifier to the lightsaber parry equal to what the Scale difference would be (-2D speeder, -4D Walker, -6D starfighter. If the character fails, he may NOT attempt to dodge. He is hit by the weapon AND the scale difference does add to the damage.
A vehicle mounted blaster cannon fires at the Jedi, he decided to try and block it, rolls his parry and and fails. The weapons does 3D+2 +2D for scale difference. The Jedi rolls soak vs 5D+2 damage.
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Raven Redstar
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| Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 10:18 am Post subject: |
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| shootingwomprats wrote: | | If lightsaber combat is "up" when the character is attacked, as reactive defense he declares he is using his lightsaber parry. This still counts as an additional action. Roll lightsaber parry, this becomes the new target number for all enemies using ranged weapons. |
This is my general take on it. It's not necessarily that the Jedi is rolling to beat the attackers shot, it's that the attacker now needs to beat the Jedi's defense, just like dodge. This can then be countered by combined action shooters with relative ease. Which then also can reflect the deaths of the Jedi at the hands of their clone troops in Ep. 3.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 12:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Raven Redstar wrote: | | This is my general take on it. It's not necessarily that the Jedi is rolling to beat the attackers shot, it's that the attacker now needs to beat the Jedi's defense, just like dodge. This can then be countered by combined action shooters with relative ease. Which then also can reflect the deaths of the Jedi at the hands of their clone troops in Ep. 3. |
But how is a single shooter supposed to beat the Jedi's defense? It's not like he can somehow make blaster bolts more difficult to parry. A blaster bolt will be traveling at a speed and trajectory dictated by physics, and the shooter's control of said bolt ends the moment it leaves the blaster. So while Boba Fett may be able to pick where his shot goes with pinpoint precision, whereas a stormtrooper might just get lucky and hit his target, a blaster bolt is simply a blaster bolt. It's a linear energy discharge that may or may not intersect with a point in space occupied by its target.
A high Blaster roll simply makes a blaster bolt more likely to go where you want it to go. The RoE optional damage rules factor this in; the higher you roll, the more accurately you are able to place your shot to inflict damage. It does not (or should not, at least) make the blaster bolt harder to hit.
As a real world example, a bullet from an M1911 .45 is going to have the same muzzle velocity (relatively speaking; there is a lot of variation between ammo types) regardless of whether it is being fired by a raw recruit or a veteran Delta Force assault specialist. The Delta operator's shot will be far more likely to go where he wants it to go, but regardless of who is doing the shooting, the bullet will be traveling the same velocity. A person who has the ability to sense the shots coming and swat them out of the air will experience no difference in difficulty between the recruit's shot and the veteran operator's shot; they're basically the same bullet once they leave the gun's barrel.
The point I'm trying to make is that the shooter's skill has no appreciable effect on the blaster bolt itself. No matter how high he rolls, he can't make the shot somehow more intense, or make it jink at the last second to avoid the lightsaber's parry attempt; all he can do is shoot well enough to make the bolt hit the target. The physics of the bolt itself (such as the Scale difference shootingwomprats mentioned) may make the bolt harder to parry, but an accurately fired shot is just an accurately fired shot. Even range isn't a realistic factor, as a Jedi's precognitive sense is going to alert him to the incoming blaster bolt regardless.
What the more experienced shooter can do (and does, as seen in AOTC and TCW) is to barrage the Jedi with multiple shots, accepting MAPs of his own in order to inflict them on the Jedi by forcing the Jedi to parry multiple shots.
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garhkal
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| Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 1:54 pm Post subject: |
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| Raven Redstar wrote: | | shootingwomprats wrote: | | If lightsaber combat is "up" when the character is attacked, as reactive defense he declares he is using his lightsaber parry. This still counts as an additional action. Roll lightsaber parry, this becomes the new target number for all enemies using ranged weapons. |
This is my general take on it. It's not necessarily that the Jedi is rolling to beat the attackers shot, it's that the attacker now needs to beat the Jedi's defense, just like dodge. This can then be countered by combined action shooters with relative ease. Which then also can reflect the deaths of the Jedi at the hands of their clone troops in Ep. 3. |
This is how i handle it. The jedi (if he has ls combat up) uses his parry roll, as if he dodged, setting the blaster (Or firearm shooter's) target number he needs to be to hit the jedi. One parry roll is good for all blaster shots.
BUT i also make it a separate parry roll for missiles, thrown weapons, flamers (and other ranged weapons) and a separate one for melee - light saber and melee -other..
So if you have 5 people ganging up on a jedi (or dark jedi) have everyone target him with different attacks to wear him down with MAPs.
So if say Sam McSith was being shot at with a blaster (PC 1) a Flame Rifle (PC 2) and a sonic pistol (PC 3), that would be 3 separate LS parry rolls that Sam needs to make.
If then PC 4 walks up and brawls with him that would be a 4th.
| Quote: | | What the more experienced shooter can do (and does, as seen in AOTC and TCW) is to barrage the Jedi with multiple shots, accepting MAPs of his own in order to inflict them on the Jedi by forcing the Jedi to parry multiple shots. |
So should EACH shot being parried be one action/parry roll?
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 11:57 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | So should EACH shot being parried be one action/parry roll? |
That's my thinking; no full parries for lightsabers, a single shot has a flat difficulty (Easy or Moderate, I'm thinking), with the shooter's skill roll applied to damage (using the RoE rules) if it hits, but each additional bolt to be parried inflicts a MAP. This would go a long way toward explaining how the barrage of blaster bolts effect seems to work so well against Jedi; either killing them or forcing them to stand their ground on defense.
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Zarm R'keeg
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| Posted: Tue May 05, 2015 1:13 pm Post subject: |
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| Thx1138 wrote: | | Well the prequel trilogy was insane with blaster bolt deflection, I mean TPM had more blaster bolt deflection than the entire original trilogy. That being said I feel that a flat difficulty is just fine because it makes it much more in tune with the cinematic aspect of the game. If you think about it, blaster bolt deflection is the first thing they teach in lightsaber 101. |
Yeah. The prequels, combined with video games like Jedi Outcast (where blaster deflection is an automatic, passive action- hands off the keyboard, Kyle will still be deflecting blaster bolts as long as they're from a single force), really ruined Order 66 for me... "You're gonna kill them with blasters? The one thing that they can parry for hours on end without apparent difficulty? Why did Kai Adi Mundi only last for, like, 3 seconds of parrying?!" 
I *suppose* combined actions might help to cover it...
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garhkal
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| Posted: Tue May 05, 2015 3:03 pm Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: | | garhkal wrote: | | So should EACH shot being parried be one action/parry roll? |
That's my thinking; no full parries for lightsabers, a single shot has a flat difficulty (Easy or Moderate, I'm thinking), with the shooter's skill roll applied to damage (using the RoE rules) if it hits, but each additional bolt to be parried inflicts a MAP. This would go a long way toward explaining how the barrage of blaster bolts effect seems to work so well against Jedi; either killing them or forcing them to stand their ground on defense. |
If you are just going to drop all bolt shots to an easy/moderate difficulty, then why would enemy troops EVER bother combining fire? Why wouldn't they just spam fire the target, to rank up the MAPS so much that even a 20d jedi could not deflect them all??
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Wed May 06, 2015 12:13 am Post subject: |
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Isn't that what actually happened in ROTS?
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Thx1138
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| Posted: Wed May 06, 2015 12:18 am Post subject: |
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| Could it be possible that perhaps that the first few deflections could be free actions, Like the first three or four and than those after have a map penalty. It would make the cinematic explanation more believable since if a barrage is necessary to take a Jedi down it makes sense to give the Jedi a slight advantage due to there training. |
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Sun May 24, 2015 1:53 am Post subject: |
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So, after some reflection, I'm dropping the no-full-parry idea I suggested previously. Here's what I'm thinking...
1). Jedi can still full parry, but at higher difficulty than just parrying a single shot, and that difficulty goes up even higher when attempting to parry attacks from multiple arcs.
2). Again, based on my belief that a blaster bolt is simply a blaster bolt, regardless of the skill of the person firing it, the parry difficulty will be a flat difficulty, not an opposed roll against the shooter's skill roll.
3). However, the shooter's skill roll will still contribute to the damage of any shot that actually hits (RoE optional damage rule).
4). Any coordination bonus for multiple attackers stacks with the base difficulty to represent the difficulty of parrying multiple attacks from multiple sources.
We see in both the films and TCW that the more lethal and capable non-FS opponents use a tactic of bombarding the Jedi with multiple shots, forcing them on the defensive, then using augmented mobility systems (jet packs and such) to keep the range open. Even with a flat difficulty, firing enough shots will still force a Jedi to go full parry and stand his ground to keep from getting hit.
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