Two questions: Circle of Shelter and Force Leap

By BarbeChenue, in General Discussion

Hi, I have two simple questions, and I've been fiddling with them for a while.

Can you use Improved Parry or Improved Reflect with Circle of Shelter? Could you, for example, use the Threats/Despairs generated on a Hit against your ally to riposte back with a reflected blaster bolt or lightsaber hit, for instance.

Can you Force leap as a maneuver twice in the same turn (by using two maneuvers the normal way)? I see no reason why not, but given the fact Force leap allows for two range bands (not "two maneuvers worth of movements"), and that going from extreme to long and long to medium is much longer than going from medium to short and from short to engaged, I was thinking that FOUR range bands might be a bit intense . My calculations place "Force leapers" as the low end of vehicle speeds... which is pretty **** fast for a living creature. Is it true or too good to be true?

Edited by BarbeChenue

I would say that yes to both. I see no problem in the interpretations.

1) Technically, by a strict reading of the rules, no. I am thinking it might be a tad overpowered as well. If you wanna be the redirect master and take all the fire yourself, use Strategic Form plus Improved & Supreme Reflect. Circle of Shelter is just good for protecting your allies, not for countering your enemies' attacks. (Edit: this interpretation is wrong! Jsyk)

2) I'd say yeah, totally. However, the "Force leap" upgrades (Control + range) allow the user to spend 2 FP to jump horizontally to any location in medium range. Once you get to that location, you then determine your new "medium range" and go from there. So you don't really get "four range bands of movement," you get "medium range, then again out to medium range." But essentially that's Long range in one turn, so you'd be faster than most :)

Edited by awayputurwpn

The Force leaping should be fine but I agree with awayputurwpn that it would really only get you to Long range at best.

Circle of Shelter is an interesting one. My first instinct was no, since I believed both were active talents which required an Action to activate (and you can't have two actions per turn). However, since Circle of Shelter is passive, I'm now leaning towards yes. It opens up your abilities to protect others, and both Improved Parry and Improved Reflect work on the same principle of being a free Incidental you take on someone else's Action.

Also, even if they were both active, Parry and Reflect are already used outside of your normal turn anyway.

Edited by CaptainRaspberry

1) By strict reading of the RAW, I'd say that Improved Parry/Reflect could be used with Circle of Shelter. CoS changes the "when you're hit by an enemy attack" condition of Parry/Reflect to "when an engaged ally is hit by an enemy attack," and Improved Parry/Reflect generally trigger off when you use Parry/Reflect. It's also quite an investment in XP, since Circle of Shelter is on the Protector spec and the PC would need to buy into the Soresu Defender spec to get both Improved Parry and Improved Reflect. So it's not a combination that a starting character or even a Knight Level character can pull off.

2) You could, since you're allowed two maneuvers per turn. As for how far that'd take your leaping Force user, that's probably going to depend on the GM. If you're at Extreme, my call as GM would probably enable you to get to Medium range if you used Force Leap twice and activated the Range Upgrade, with the first use going from Extreme to Long, and the second from Long to Medium, as those normally require two maneuvers for a normal person anyway.

1) By strict reading of the RAW, I'd say that Improved Parry/Reflect could be used with Circle of Shelter. CoS changes the "when you're hit by an enemy attack" condition of Parry/Reflect to "when an engaged ally is hit by an enemy attack," and Improved Parry/Reflect generally trigger off when you use Parry/Reflect.

This was my first inclination too, but the rules for Improved Parry/Reflect trigger off the parrying/reflecting character suffering a hit , not off them using the Parry/Reflect talent. That's why I said technically. I am not quite sure of the spirit of the rules here, but you make good points and I'd bve interested in what more people have to say on the matter.

As soon as the Core Rulebook comes out I might find myself asking a rules question ;)

It's also quite an investment in XP, since Circle of Shelter is on the Protector spec and the PC would need to buy into the Soresu Defender spec to get both Improved Parry and Improved Reflect. So it's not a combination that a starting character or even a Knight Level character can pull off.

Yeah, this is a good point. Maybe my initial judgement of overpowered-ness was off base.

#2 - All clear, this makes perfect sense; wow, I love those forums!

#1 - Yeah, I came to the same exact contradictory readings as a GM: One going by RAW, stricto sensu, "you" are not the one targeted by the attack, you're only allowed to use Reflect/Parry to deduce damage, but Imp. Reflect/Parry wouldn't trigger since the condition "you being attacked" is still not triggered. The other reading, going by RAI+Star Wars movies, where we see "protectors" using Improved Reflect + Circle of Shelter that way quite a bit, while protecting others.

The reason I want to clear this out, is that I have a DMPC "healer"/protector who sometimes helps the PCs in battle, he's pretty much a tank, and not the focus of attention. Circle of Shelter would allow him to create a nice "protection bubble" in tight matchups, and going into Protect/Unleash, this would be like a mini-eye of the storm during large engagements, with the caveat that the now bunched up PCs would be VERY vulnerable to Blast weapons, grenades, gasses, ordnance, etc. But, as you may understand, I don't want to adjudicate this in a way that would be unfair, and I'd like the combo to be 100% legit if I ever use it, since I'm a GM, and want to avoid Mary Sue/Marty Stu NPCs with big GM conflict of interest.

That would make a good Dev question, I think.

I'd say Improved versions are allowed for Circle of Shelter. Because really, Improved is just taking the base talent, and tacking on an extra bonus. Another way to think of it is like this: You spend your action using Defensive Circle to chuck some defense onto yourself and an engaged ally (and maybe a few short range allies). A melee attack comes in to hit your engaged ally and you use Circle of Shelter to use Parry to help your ally out. Since you didn't make an attack last turn, you'd definitely take the bonus from Supreme Parry and knock it down to costing 1 strain, so why not use Improved Parry's effects as well if you can trigger them?

It all kind of goes back into how a lot of the Lightsaber Specialization's special talents all are meant to work in tandem to create powerful combinations and sort of push players into using their Lightsaber a certain way if they stick to a single Lightsaber Specialization. In Soresu's case, it's like you describe your GMPC, you're a tank that can take a massive beating and pulls in the attention of the heavy hitters.

I just received the answer, straight from Sam Stewart:

Hello BarbeChenue,

Sorry for the late reply, but generally we like to encourage people to submit questions via the rules question function on our forums. To answer your question, though; yes you can use Improved Parry or Reflect with Circle of Shelter.

This "beta forum" probably won't get much traffic in the future, so I guess I'll cross-post this in the EotE Dev Answers thread.