Another lightwhip thread (but with other whips too!)

[raithyn]

As mentioned elsewhere, one of my players wants a lightwhip. I'm not thrilled with this development but decided to see what I could come up with. I looked through Gundark's, Galladinium's, the Weapons Stats compendium, and several Saga sourcebooks (still not Star Wars Gamer but the Jedi Academy book has D20 stats), and several non-Star Wars systems to see how whips are handled and locate any implementation of lightwhips specifically.

What I found was that whips vary wildly across D6 sources. That sort of makes sense to me. Real-world whips come in a variety of shapes and sizes for different functions. The cryo whip and neuronic whip are both styled after shorter combat whips (in both the image and the stats). Saga assumes something closer to a 20' bull or stock whip. Adventure Journal 9 has a weird amalgamation where two types of whip are described being used like short combat whips but there's also a scene where a Mystril thief wraps her whip around someone's neck from a distance.

I think longer whips that can do things like that better mimic what my player wants in play. Longer whips are less likely to do real damage but can be used to trip up or lasso targets. They also provide extra reach, basically allowing a (minimally) ranged attack with a melee weapon.

Given all that, ended up creating four stat blocks of progressively stronger items from a standard whip (which is really just to get the base properties set) to a lightwhip.


WHIP
Model: BargeCorp Basics stockwhip
Type: Melee weapon
Scale: Character
Skill: Melee combat: whip
Cost: 100
Availability: 1
Difficulty: Moderate
Damage: STR+2 physical or entangle
Game Notes:

• The whip has a melee reach of 4 meters.
• The wielder gains a +1D bonus to attempts to trip a target with the whip.
• The wielder suffers a −2D penalty to all rolls made to parry attacks with the whip.

VIBROWHIP
Model: Salus Corp. CobaltBlack Series Mono-cord Whip
Type: Melee weapon
Scale: Character
Skill: Melee combat: whip
Cost: 350
Availability: 2, X
Difficulty: Moderate
Damage: STR+1D+2 physical or entangle
Game Notes:

• The whip has a melee reach of 4 meters.
• The wielder gains a +1D bonus to attempts to trip a target with the whip.
• The wielder suffers a −2D penalty to all rolls made to parry attacks with the whip.

SHOCK WHIP
Model: Zygerrian electro-whip
Type: Melee weapon
Scale: Character
Skill: Melee combat: shock whip
Cost: 1,200
Availability: 2, X
Difficulty: Difficult
Damage: STR+2D+2 energy or entangle
Game Notes:

• The whip has a melee reach of 4 meters.
• The user may set the weapon to “stun” to deal stun damage instead of energy damage.
• The wielder gains a +1D bonus to attempts to trip a target with the whip.
• The wielder suffers a −2D penalty to all rolls made to parry attacks with the whip.
• This weapon can parry lightsabers without taking damage.

LIGHTWHIP
Model: Exotic Jedi weapon
Type: Melee weapon
Scale: Character
Skill: Lightsaber: lightwhip
Cost: Unavailable for sale
Availability: 4, X
Difficulty: Difficult
Damage: 3D+2 energy or entangle
Game Notes:

• The lightwhip has a melee reach of 4 meters.
• The wielder injures themself if they miss the base difficulty number by more than 10 points.
• The wielder gains a +1D bonus to attempts to trip a target with the lightwhip.
• The wielder suffers a −2D penalty to all rolls made to parry or deflect attacks with the lightwhip.
• The wielder may use the Lightsaber Combat power with the lightwhip but cannot add their control dice to the lightsaber's damage when automatically dealing damage to a target grappled by the lightwhip.

Things I'm still on the fence about:

• Should the lightwhip have a unique base skill instead of lightsaber?
• 4 meter reach is what Saga uses. It's realistic for a 20 foot whip (which is on the long of normal) and is nowhere near as much as shown in some of the animated Star Wars episodes but it's a lot. Maybe too much.
• I plan to let characters try to use the whip's lasso property against the wielder at narratively appropriate moments--or as the player's think to try it. (Obi-Wan repeatedly uses this trick to disarm Ona Nobis in the Jedi Apprentice series.) I'm not sure if I should explicitly write anything out for that. I lean towards keeping it a surprise.

[garhkal]

Since whips are unique imo, for "melee" compared to most other weapons, then yes, i do see a light whip as being its OWN skill, separate from light sabers, light staves etc..
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