Hi,

I'm pretty new to FFG Star Wars, and although I've been collecting the books from EotE Beta I haven't really played or run much, so my question/concern might be completely silly/unnecessary

I was wondering if the way Parry and Reflect work shouldn't somehow mitigate crits, especially considering the general crit probability/severity with a lightsaber (often 1 advantage with vicious quality).

Maybe I'm missing something, but I feel like even if you lose 1 or 2 wounds instead of 11-12, the critical effects will put you down and end any duel fast and with lasting (or more likely final) consequences.

Thanks!

First off, the stats for sabers have changed, so lower base damage and no more vicious or crit 1s unless you've done some modding.

Factor in that most enemies you'll be having an epic duel with will have multiple ranks in adversary, and probably some defenses too, and landing a crit will not be easy.

Even then, in my experience it still takes 3 or 4 crits before things get silly... If anything until you start losing body parts the crits actually work really really well as a way to represent fast dynamic duels that are dramatic without dragging on forever.

As Ghostofman noted, lightsabers now have a much more sensible stat block (Damage 6, Crit Rating 2, no ranks in Vicious), so with enough ranks of Parry, it could be possible to soak enough damage from a lightsaber strike that the target suffers no damage, and thus no critical injury.

Granted, it'd take quite a while to be able to get that many ranks, unless you're a Shii-Cho Knight (4 ranks of Parry for a total damage mitigation of 6) or Makashi Duelist (5 ranks of Parry for a damage mitigation of 7), in which case you'd just need to jump over into Soresu Defender to grab the two Row 1 instances of Parry for a +2 bump to Parry's damage mitigation.

More likely though is that opponents using the more common variety of melee weapons (barring vibro-weapons and lightsabers) won't be able to trigger a critical injury, since even a couple ranks of Parry is going to reduce that damage by almost half, and a Soak Value of 3 will often take care of the rest of it unless the attacker got a lot of successes.

Thanks! I'm aware of new stats for lightsabers and was thinking more about a nemesis rank adversary going against players with modded saber, but I see your points. Not having played much it's sometimes hard to foresee the outcomes of rules.

BTW, are there any anti-Vicious talents in F&D to defend against crit severity?

yup. durable, and they're in EotE and AoR as well.

BTW, are there any anti-Vicious talents in F&D to defend against crit severity?

Resist Disarm

Activation: Active (Incidental, Out of Turn)

Ranked: No

Trees: Makashi Duelist

If the character would be disarmed or his weapon would be damaged or destroyed, he may choose to suffer 2 strain to ignore the effect.

EDIT: It's the base (5EXP) Makashi Duelist Talent and required to continue up the Tree (Makashi Technique is the next bottleneck Talent).

but you can get the a lightsaber with the stats found in EotE by just modifications.

What I mean is that NPCs, like Jedi-in-hiding or the Forsaken Jedi which carry a lightsaber, for the sake of simplicity it is ok to just give them the stats of the lightsaber found in EotE and AoR, with their Vicious and Critic 1 qualities.

but you can get the a lightsaber with the stats found in EotE by just modifications.

What I mean is that NPCs, like Jedi-in-hiding or the Forsaken Jedi which carry a lightsaber, for the sake of simplicity it is ok to just give them the stats of the lightsaber found in EotE and AoR, with their Vicious and Critic 1 qualities.

If you're running an AoR or EotE game then I'd say it's probably perfectly fine.

If you're starting as a Knight level character you have an extra Cr 10,000 in gear. Taking a Cr 9,300 saber and adding 7 modifications (4 damage +1, 2 vicious, and 1 Crit -1) will grant you a damage 10 Vicious 2, Crit 1 lightsaber. This seems like a pretty good use of the extra Cr 700 to me and I did it for my character.

If you're starting as a Knight level character you have an extra Cr 10,000 in gear. Taking a Cr 9,300 saber and adding 7 modifications (4 damage +1, 2 vicious, and 1 Crit -1) will grant you a damage 10 Vicious 2, Crit 1 lightsaber. This seems like a pretty good use of the extra Cr 700 to me and I did it for my character.

The character should still have to roll the necessary mechanics checks for each modification with the increasing difficulty with each one.

There are also varying opinions on how much the mods cost beyond the first. One school of thought would be it's 100cr per mod. Another would be 100 cr for the first, then 200cr for each mod after the first (the beta book lists it as 100cr plus the base cost, which many assume the base cost to be the 100cr mentioned in the paragraphs before that sentence). The last school of thought is that its 100cr more than the previous mod. So 100cr for the first, 200cr for the second, 300cr for the third and so on. So your math may not be accurate.

Finally, many GMs may not allow their players to modify their gear during character creation, even for Knight-level play. But that will vary from table to table.

If you're starting as a Knight level character you have an extra Cr 10,000 in gear. Taking a Cr 9,300 saber and adding 7 modifications (4 damage +1, 2 vicious, and 1 Crit -1) will grant you a damage 10 Vicious 2, Crit 1 lightsaber. This seems like a pretty good use of the extra Cr 700 to me and I did it for my character.

The character should still have to roll the necessary mechanics checks for each modification with the increasing difficulty with each one.

No, the text says "gear" not "unmodified gear unless you make the mod rules" so by RAW it is allowed. Also - you don't have to make availability rules for gear you start with so why would you have to make mod rules for gear you start with?

No, the text says "gear" not "unmodified gear unless you make the mod rules" so by RAW it is allowed. Also - you don't have to make availability rules for gear you start with so why would you have to make mod rules for gear you start with?

Well, technically the rules are a choice between a basic lightsaber OR 10,000 credits to be applied to starting gear/vehicles ( in other words, anything non-restricted). If it meant for you to even consider buying a lightsaber with the 10k credits as well as whatever else you want, it wouldn't bring the choice up and simple say you can get 10k to spend, and that includes a lightsaber, but it doesn't. So the availability rules of "no restricted gear" is still present unless the GM is fine with you doing that, which I'll say again, is not the intent of the system, as it's meant to give those who desperately want a lightsaber to get one, while anyone else gets a little more worth in credits and can spend it on whatever else they choose.

Besides that, you are not allowed free auto-modded gear. This breaks the intent of the modding system - which is meant to be both a money sink and something characters need to work for. So, for instance, let's say you've got a Knight-Level character. You take the 2,500 in credits by keeping Morality at 50 and the basic lightsaber. You're sitting at 3,000 credits. By your logic, the player is absolutely free to apply 2,800 of those credits and just max out his Ilum crystal. Just like that. Something that would take varying degrees of checks up to, I think it was 4 Challenge Dice and 1 Difficulty Die, just done in an instant. The biggest piece of gear for a Jedi character already near completion (there's still a couple HP for a handful of attachments, though most of which only have 1 modification to bring them to their highest potential) at the start of a game. That's not the Rules as Written, and it's most definitely not the Rules as Intended.

If you want to spend credits on attachments and chuck them on though, feel absolutely free to do so. Most of them require no check to throw on, and they are definitely well within the rules to let you buy them and attach them. Heck, you're even able to just stock up on spare parts to apply to attachments later on. But by no means do the rules even get remotely close to suggesting that you can bypass something like modification checks.

No, the text says "gear" not "unmodified gear unless you make the mod rules" so by RAW it is allowed. Also - you don't have to make availability rules for gear you start with so why would you have to make mod rules for gear you start with?

Besides that, you are not allowed free auto-modded gear. This breaks the intent of the modding system - which is meant to be both a money sink and something characters need to work for.

If you want to spend credits on attachments and chuck them on though, feel absolutely free to do so. Most of them require no check to throw on, and they are definitely well within the rules to let you ****** them up. Heck, you're even able to just stock up on spare parts to apply to attachments later on. But by no means do the rules even get remotely close to suggesting that you can bypass something like modification checks.

The rules clearly say that to install a Mod requires a Mechanics roll. They say nothing at all to establish that you can not start with gear that has already been modified and for which such rolls have already been made.

The rules clearly say that to install a Mod requires a Mechanics roll. They say nothing at all to establish that you can not start with gear that has already been modified and for which such rolls have already been made.

If you/your GM wants to allow pre-modded stuff that's fine for your group, but trying to bypass the modding system, which is meant both as a carrot-and-stick for players gear-wise, but also as a way of keeping them hungry (making them manage their credits), will do a fair bit to cut into the general longevity of the game, especially when the main piece of their weapon (lightsaber crystal) is completely safe from harm when the lightsaber gets Sundered.

The modding system is there to make players take risks - make them wonder if it's worth that extra +1 Damage when all it needs is a single Despair to break the crystal into pieces, or even just failing means the very rare crystal they've got would never be able to hit its full potential. I've seen some suggestions in the past of maybe allowing 1 check-free mod (still needing to pay for the attachment and spare parts), which is reasonable, but allowing a Knight Level Play force user to get their crystal maxed out from the start of the game is just way too much. That's 7 incredibly difficult skill checks hand-waived, ignoring the possibilities of either failing the mod completely or just completely ruining the crystal. And that's not counting people who would rather take the credits and would be modding their Heavy Blaster Rifles and what-not to hell and back and would likely be bypassing even more than 7 mod checks (spread across different attachments, obviously).

You are all assuming that the new Lightsaber damage is a ret-con. I assumed that it's understood that Jedi improve their lightsabers until they are around the range of the other EotE or AoR. Darth Vader to me, would have one of those old lightsabers which means he should have been doing lots of crits on Luke in ESB.

I'd like someone to do the lightsaber battle in ESB as a FoD combat.