I am a little confused as to why melee defense is always a 2 (average) difficulty.

I suppose it makes sense for ranged defense because nobody can realistically dodge a laser, but why isn't the difficulty of melee defense based on the opponent's skill and/or agility.

Side for equipment and a couple of obscure un-ranked talents, there is no way to increase one's defense.

I've questioned that "set" difficulty myself, actually. Personally, I think it should have been a contested roll, as it'd seem to be a duel of skill. One melee fighter vs another. But...for simplistics sake, I guess having an average (plus or minus modifiers) is a quick and easy solutions.

I've thought the same thing myself.. did a post about it saying what if you were acrobatic? Someone who jumps around and flips are harder to hit than someone just standing there.. Didnt get a good answer.. Just decided to house rule it.

Has anyone built house rules around melee defense difficulty and playtested them?

IMHO the thought is that the increased difficulity over shooting is to represent the other person fighting back and trying not to get hit. The design for this game seems to be to make quick judgement calls on what difficulties should be. A set baseline seems to do this fine enough.

They probably didn't want a contested roll because that can get pretty dirty pretty quick. For example, what would the difficulty for punching a minion group be? Just the one for the one guy you're punching? What happens if you roll more wounds than he has WT for? Does that carry over to the next guy with standard minion wound rolls? If so, then it's not fair that he wasn't able to fight back. If the contested roll was for the entire group, then that doesn't make sense if half the group isn't in melee. The flat roll makes it a quick and easy roll.

I've thought the same thing myself.. did a post about it saying what if you were acrobatic? Someone who jumps around and flips are harder to hit than someone just standing there.. Didnt get a good answer.. Just decided to house rule it.

I think the intention is for an acrobatic type fighter to take Dodge and Sidestep and what not. Those work well enough to simulate an acrobatic fighter. As does the defensive fighting maneuver, or whatever it's called. Spend a maneuver to add a black die to incoming attacks, but your outgoing attacks suffer the same black die as well. That would be someone who concentrates more on not being hit and moving all over the place over trying to land a solid hit.

At the risk of sounding snarky, do you do you house rule shooting at an acrobatic character? They would be jumping around and doing flips too.

yes I do..

The only real answer as to why difficulty is not contested is simply to keep combats from becoming static. If you house rule this to be opposed, your combats will become a grind...it's been tried Unless you like that kind of D&D slogfest...

In this game the advantage is given to the attacker. This is a function of a compressed dice pool, statistically if you start messing with this stuff you throw the game balance off. And the entire game is based around this, which is why you have talents and equipment to modify it.

That said, there are several ways to modify the dice pool, and this:

Side for equipment and a couple of obscure un-ranked talents, there is no way to increase one's defense.

...this isn't true. Ranked Talents like Dodge, Defensive Stance, and Side Step are great for adding chances of Despair and reducing advantages triggered. If you get a third rank, the difficulty will be RRP, which is nasty to go up against.

I've thought the same thing myself.. did a post about it saying what if you were acrobatic? Someone who jumps around and flips are harder to hit than someone just standing there.. Didnt get a good answer.. Just decided to house rule it.

Maybe you didn't get an answer you liked. Flipping around is useless. All that time in the air is just more time for somebody to nail you. The first lesson in blocking in kung fu was how *not* to flail around, but the precision with which you slip a punch just past your ear.

Check out the fate of mr flippy:

There's quite a few talents/qualities/manoeuvers that alter the difficulty of melee/brawling attacks:

The Melee Defence rating of armour or talents, the Defensive quality of weapons like vibroswords and the Guarded Stance manoeuver all add black dice to the attacker's pool.

The Dodge and Defensive Stance talents upgrade the difficulty (purple become red) of the roll.

Force Sensitive characters with the Sense powers get a nifty one (left column).

All of them plus a vs. roll would mean nobody's hitting anybody with any regularity.

Also, someone mentioned acrobatics: the new Performer spec has the "Coordinated Dodge" talent, which is arguably the best defensive talent to date.

In TCW Ahsoka Tano Jumps and flips around dodging blaster blasts left and right. It's this kind of thing that I'm talking about. Or the Battle between Darth Maul and Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon. Darth Maul occasionally does some jumps while blocking attacks. I think Obi-Wan does a flip as well.

Jumping and flipping in lightsaber combat isn't to dodge, it is to dance on the screen for the viewers to watch. It is elegant, it is pretty, it makes pretty light shows, but that is not real combat (see Indiana Jones if you think I am wrong dancing versus a bullet = dead dancer).

The designers considered using a contested roll early on, but found that it could quickly lead to people becoming very difficult to hit with melee weapons. Therefore many characters would opt out of melee skills and weapons to favour ranged weapons instead and its more static dificulties. They wanted to leave melee as a viable option. As pointed out, there are a variety of options that can increase your defensive ability.

In TCW Ahsoka Tano Jumps and flips around dodging blaster blasts left and right. It's this kind of thing that I'm talking about. Or the Battle between Darth Maul and Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon. Darth Maul occasionally does some jumps while blocking attacks. I think Obi-Wan does a flip as well.

That would be talents like dodge and sidestep. Just like others have already said.

With how this system works (such as rounds not lasting mere seconds, or attack rolls not having to represent individual shots) you'll never be able to account for every hop and flourish.

It's also easy enough to descrive a miss as a character doing all sorts of flips and twirls.

The designers considered using a contested roll early on, but found that it could quickly lead to people becoming very difficult to hit with melee weapons. Therefore many characters would opt out of melee skills and weapons to favour ranged weapons instead and its more static dificulties. They wanted to leave melee as a viable option. As pointed out, there are a variety of options that can increase your defensive ability.

Simplicity's sake is the easiest answer, because one person's concept of what melee combat should look like is another person's silly Hollywoodized nonsense. It's just plain easier mechanically to use a static base to start from and modify from there.

I'm just simply stating that I think Combat should be a Contested roll and not a fixed one.

Maybe it varies depending on the situation. Steven Seagal knife fights (except for the script armor of the lead) feel like two elks ramming into each other and after the pass you see who's still alive.

Cinematic sword fights might be what you are looking for.... except in real fencing matches apparently you spend a lot of time standing around while the officials decide who killed whom in the first 3 fractions of a second.

I'm just simply stating that I think Combat should be a Contested roll and not a fixed one.

So give it a whirl. But make it a test before you actually do it for real. Try it at low levels, medium levels, and high levels.

Don't for get the one where the player has 3:4, and the nemesis opponent has 3:4 and 3 ranks of adversary...

Jumping and flipping in lightsaber combat isn't to dodge, it is to dance on the screen for the viewers to watch. It is elegant, it is pretty, it makes pretty light shows, but that is not real combat (see Indiana Jones if you think I am wrong dancing versus a bullet = dead dancer).

I see what you are saying, but it shouldn't be overlooked that the "Star Wars" setting employs a form of the "swashbuckler/wuxia physics" that turns the flashier movies into the more effective ones.