So I had an interesting Idea today while flipping through my F&D core book.Now let me preface this by saying this has not been play tested at all. I just wanted to bounce the idea off of someone to see if it had any legs. When It comes to one on one fights in tabletop Rpgs I am a fan of systems that have active defenses. By that I mean the aggressor rolls for attacks and the defender actively rolls to defend themselves. In my experience it makes for more engaging 1v1 combats rather than the defender just relying on a TN or difficulty dice even if it might make the combat longer. Also with both opponents describing action and reactions I feel it is also more cinematic.

With all that being said, since a fight between two force using lightsaber wielders is a test of Skill v Skill and Force v Force, has any body tried toying around the idea of doing away with the difficulty dice and having straight opposed rolls? The attacker's successes would be canceled out by defender's successes and vice versa. The same thing goes for advantages and triumph. The only thing that this eliminates from the equation is the Despair symbol, but really isn't a Triumph rolled by the defender a despair from the attacker's point of view? I would keep the setback and boost dice in play to account for environmental and situational modifiers. Any action that is not specifically targeting the opponent in the duel would use the normal system.

Just an Idea. Any constructive criticism would be appreciated.

Anyone?.... Beuhler?

It would be horribly long and boring, especially if you throw the parry talent into the equation,

This idea idea has come up before. Many times.

1. You got opposed checks wrong for this system. Opposed checks involves generating the negative dice based on the opponent's characteristic and skill, it is still only the active player that rolls. What you present is something else.
2. I'm pretty sure some people have tested using opposed checks. From what I remember it wasn't particularly encouraging, but what do I know, I hope they share their experience.
3. What you present is more akin to competitive checks, which could also be a solution if you don't mind potentially very, very long (and arguably boring) duels.

The reason it's going to take longer, at least with opposed checks, is that the increased difficulty decreases chance of success, for both combatants. This can make combat drag on. And on. And on.

Depending on how you solve a competitive check, what and how you pick base difficulty, things can look equally grim (at least). On what do you base the difficulty? Terrain? skill difference? what about defensive talents? out of turn talents like dodge?

If you don't mind long combats and rounds where nothing particularly happen except a strain regain here or a setback die there ... at best, then go for it.

I'm one of the guilty parties who also brought this idea up a little while ago, just prior to the core rulebook release. One of the main points I took from the feedback was that the core rulebook would include enough talents to spice up lightsaber duels without any house ruling. Now that I have the book, I'm inclined to agree. I'd also add that from my own experience, adding more dice to the pool via an opposed roll simply means you're having to fathom the effects of yet more dice, which drags out the decisions on the narrative outcome. Keep it simple.

We only made a combat houserule change. Reflect adds Failures instead reduce damage. We are using the rest of the rules and are just awesome

Me and one of my players have tested something akin to this. As a bit of preface, he and I have been gaming together for so many years it makes me feel old to count, and we had an old school WEG D6 game that ran for like... 6 years.

From experience, in WEG where you had opposed rolls, it turned a lightsaber duel into a whole lot of swing-parry-swing-parry-repeat for half an hour and boom someone is dead. This is not all that epic for anyone not involved in the rolls, and ocaisionally led to the spectators firing into melee.

Now, FFG is stunningly and refreshingly not like that, But I do ocaisionally feel like we have traded long and drawn out parry fests until someone connects and we need a body removed for short paced, frenetic, suddenly everybody's KO'd fights. For example, I had a player and an NPC split off from the group to chase down a nemesis, and the fight lasted 1 round. Now, no one but the NPC pilot had armor worth mentioning, but wound up getting force fed about ten meters of Ryloth's surface due to a -hilarious- speeder bike accident caused by the nemisis not wanting to get run over, followed by the PC Shadow/Ataru Striker getting off a good linked hit with a double bladed saber that ate about half the bad guy's wounds and a third of his strain. Mr. Big Bad swings, and does exactly enough damage to drop the PC. Mr. Big bad then gets scooped up by a minion on a speeder bike and off he goes!

Fundamentally this encounter taught me two things. 1) Parry. IT WORKS. Like for-realsies, the instant I handed out XP at the end of the session my player is like "I'M BUYING PARRY!" 2) I need to rethink the narrative style I use. Now, I will admit with a good roll, I am impressed that the PC managed to put a WORLD of hurt on a guy I had intended to be fought by everyone, and this will lead to some subtle stat tweaks to make him a little beefier, but after that session I went and watched every duel ever in all the movies. What I came away with was I really should have used more smack talking incidentals, and let that combat represent more than just two swings of the saber. I figure it's worth about a minute or so of narration for one lightsaber roll.

Now, instead of using an attack and a defense roll, what we have play tested is a Jedi "Full Defense" action. Basically the way it works is this:

1) Jedi must make a maneuver to basically "Stand his ground." He pics a spot of the battlefield that he is going to be "King of the Mountain" of. This can be anywhere in short range or even engaged with a friendly they want to slip into the protective bubble, or an unfriendly they want to basically "tank" to borrow from MMO parlance.

2) The Jedi spends his action to go full defense. Any attack targeting the Jedi, or anyone he's engaged with, or made by an unfriendly he's engaged with becomes an "Opposed Check" (Sorry, no book in front of me to give you the page number)

3) Any attack that uses the opposed check causes the Jedi to suffer a strain. (It's mentally draining to stand in combat, know that these people are wanting to murder you, and instead of ducking for cover and trying to kill them right back, you make yourself the biggest target imaginable and imply that their mother and Hutts share many characteristics.)

Now, my buddy and I played with this mechanic specifically for a while, both against a wall of storm troopers, and a "two PC vs. Nemesis" scenario for a while and the results were pleasing to me.

Pros:

Blaster fire from a maxed out pack of stormies was hitting somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 out of 10 when facing a Jedi with YYGGG in Lightsaber.

No extra Rolls, so things remain speedy.

Melee Lightsaber attacks got through a bit more frequently, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1/3 ~ 1/4, but still generated all sorts of fun advantage and threat economy. This came from a pool of YYGGGRRPPP

Without someone attempting to go defensive, it took a fight from about 2 to 3 rounds to 8 to 10 rounds which feels about right to me for a "Big Bad" encounter.

Cons:

It comes close to stepping on Soresu in a couple of places, most notably Defensive Stance (Talent grants less of a defensive advantage, but allows the user to act other than stand their and take it), Strategic Form (Which functions like an MMO taunt, meaning the Soresu -must- be the target, where as with the house rule above you can shoot or stab anyone you want, but that guy with the glowstick is messing with your Chi.), and Defensive Circle (which eats an action and only an action and effects people in short range as opposed to being limited to engaged by the house rule.)

Now, while this is a powerful tool, especially combined with a high strain threshold and some parry and/or reflect, This feels pretty comfortable to me while still letting Soresu stand out as the lightsaber bulwark.

To be fair, though, after play testing this it hasn't been used once in an actual session. In the party (Knight Level game) of two Soresus, an Ataru, and two Shiens that focus on the Djem-So side of things, sabers have come out on average about once every session and a half, and the short version of most of the combats look like "First Soresu guy takes it on the chin, Ataru guy crits something and debilitates two others, Djem-So is on clean up and crowd control while second Soresu gal applies stimpack to victory."

Anyway, take this for what you will. Like I said, I've crunched some numbers on this and it's limitations and benefits seem in line with other stuff that's rules as written, and so far everyone prefers using their special toys from the talent trees. Hope this helps in some way!

Interesting thoughts there, gentlemanscoundrel. On the subject of smack talk, how about using coerce or intimidate rolls to influence the addition of bonus/setback dice to subsequent attacks? Or, even better, drop the coerce/intimidate roll altogether from the PC's side of things and if they deliver some good between-action-dialogue, give them the appropriate bonus (or the nemesis the appropriate setback). I think that because the dice mechanics take centre stage in this system, it's easy to see everything in terms of having to roll for it. I'm currently DMing a D&D 5e campaign and having gone two sessions without a single fight (mainly due to player ingenuity and a liberal helping of common sense), when the time finally comes to roll some dice, it's suddenly a big deal. I'm not advocating diceless rping at all, but when I come back to FFGSW in a big way, I'll be thinking along the lines of saving the dice rolling for special moments because it's easy to get bogged down in the rules with this system.

Pac_Man3D,

I will confess I am the kind of guy who prefers my players to actually smack talk than to roll for it.

My favorite example, after a rebel pilot schooled some imperial defectors in a simulator, the player got all cocky, grabbed a cookie off the table and says in character, "I am, after all, a rebel pilot!" Tosses the cookie in the air and darn near broke a tooth trying to catch it... It was too good, that had to have been what happened in game. For weeks, the defectors would tell people, "You have to excuse him, he is, after all, a -rebel- pilot."

Basically, the smack talk is mostly to add that little bit of epic flavor. Watching the duels, I think the only ones that didn't have some sort of "smack talk" were the ones with Darth Maul. Even fricken' YODA engaged in smack talk with Count Dooku. (To be fair, some of the smack talk was less than awe inspiring. "Strike me down and I shall become more powerful than you could imagine" wouldn't make me hesitate from delivering the kill shot.) While I think at most average to good smack talk would probably only net a single boost or set back, I am also the kind of guy that rewards my players for entertaining me. If it's a scathing comment, something absolutely on point and just AMAZINGLY witty and in the moment, I'd even hand out an upgrade of some kind, but that would have to be the best smack talking in the history of smack talk. Plus I think that kind of thing would help the players engage more.