Yes the weight is right. But he also admits the balance is still not correct. And yes I have fought using rattan. Never feels right compared to the real thing. I have found the new nylon swords are better. They have a better balance. I still use hand position and grip to know where the blade is. Not weight.

I know where my hands are with my eyes closed. I know where my blade is because I know where the grip is. I know where the grip is pointing. I have never found that this fact changes no matter what I have in my hand.

If I remember correctly, they've never actually confirmed the blades as being weightless in canon. That was something that was created in the Expanded Universe/Legends, so it can go either way when it comes to debating about it. I've always believed that one can simply become skilled enough to wield a lightsaber through proper training, even without the Force, as General Grievous is a perfect example.

If I remember correctly, they've never actually confirmed the blades as being weightless in canon. That was something that was created in the Expanded Universe/Legends, so it can go either way when it comes to debating about it. I've always believed that one can simply become skilled enough to wield a lightsaber through proper training, even without the Force, as General Grievous is a perfect example.

As of Force and Destiny they are; text in the "Lightsaber" section of the armory. Doesn't invalidate your point, though, there's a fair number of examples of non-Force-Sensitive lightsaber wielders in the EU, and a couple of instances in the new canon. It's also possible in the RPG, a non-F-S can still take a spec from a F&D career that grants Lightsaber as a career skill, and then train ranks as normal.

Hmm, that's an interesting character concept.

As for House Rules, I do a 5x personal/vehicular scale conversion for damage, rounding down. Gives personal scale a chance at least, albeit a minor one. Also require a Fly maneuver from the pilot of an air- or spacecraft every round, but combine that with Gain the Advantage. More of an actual dogfight that way. Oh, and Stimpacks inflict a Strain on the person they are applied to.

If I remember correctly, they've never actually confirmed the blades as being weightless in canon. That was something that was created in the Expanded Universe/Legends, so it can go either way when it comes to debating about it. I've always believed that one can simply become skilled enough to wield a lightsaber through proper training, even without the Force, as General Grievous is a perfect example.

As of Force and Destiny they are; text in the "Lightsaber" section of the armory. Doesn't invalidate your point, though, there's a fair number of examples of non-Force-Sensitive lightsaber wielders in the EU, and a couple of instances in the new canon. It's also possible in the RPG, a non-F-S can still take a spec from a F&D career that grants Lightsaber as a career skill, and then train ranks as normal.

Hmm, that's an interesting character concept.

Ah, okay - I don't have the book yet, so I wasn't aware. In any case, like you said, the point stands. I think there was some EU stuff where Boba Fett was shown to be able to fight moderately alright with a lightsaber. Maybe a comic? I can't remember.

I have been pondering getting rid of Linked. The results are too wild and mercurial. I've not liked it since the first time I ran the Beginner game, when one lucky TIE brought the stolen Krayt Fang to its Hull Threshold. It's a common complaint with the Beginner box: some people play through the game and it's a breeze, others barely make it...and it's all due to Linked.

I also don't like that it's been added to some of the staff weapons...and some have it, some don't, which is inconsistent considering that staves are pretty much used the same.

So I'm considering replacing all Linked with Autofire: if you want more than one hit, it's going to cost you in difficulty. Then I would modify Autofire as follows:

mostly as written, except either each successive trigger requires an extra Advantage (making Jury-Rigged less potent), or each successive hit does -1 base damage...or both

Some weapons systems would be capped in terms of number of extra hits because of vehicular limits, so a TIE would be capped at "Autofire 1" and an X-Wing would be capped at "Autofire 3". Repeating blasters might not need a cap, since the Advantages required provide that automatically.

Staves would all be "two weapon" capable, which is basically identical to "Autofire 1"

I'm not committed to this change yet, but I'm definitely leaning towards it.

I don't know if you'd call it a house rule, but we do this at my table...

After the Destiny Pool is rolled, the players can opt to answer three Star Wars trivia questions. Correct answers will flip a Dark Side chip to the Light, but wrong answers will flip a Light to Dark.

The only real change I made was to replace their stock starship combat rules with a hybrid of XWM, RAW, and some home-brew stuff. But I don't think that's that uncommon.

Awesome to see so many responses to this thread.

I want to change initiative because it is a pain to use, as is, considering I have 9 people playing in my game. More than anything, it bogs my combat down. Heck, determining iniative usually takes longer than the combat itself, and that is a detriment to my game imho. Keep in mind that there are 3 different things you keep track of to determine iniaitive order, with 9 people PLUS npc's that can bog it down a bit. I'd love to see "Combat Manager" used for this system as well, it works absolutely amazing for my Pathfinder games, but iniative is much simpler in Pathfinder as well.

Awesome to see so many responses to this thread.

I want to change initiative because it is a pain to use, as is, considering I have 9 people playing in my game. More than anything, it bogs my combat down. Heck, determining iniative usually takes longer than the combat itself, and that is a detriment to my game imho. Keep in mind that there are 3 different things you keep track of to determine iniaitive order, with 9 people PLUS npc's that can bog it down a bit. I'd love to see "Combat Manager" used for this system as well, it works absolutely amazing for my Pathfinder games, but iniative is much simpler in Pathfinder as well.

What is bogging you down with initiative? I have never had it bog down. Everytime I have played you call for a player to go and someone will speak up and go or there might be but rarely is their a debate as to who is going to go.

As to a combat manager. get a white board. make up magnetic markers for players and NPCs. have everyone roll ask for who has the highest number of successes and write that down and stick a magnetic player marker. repeat on down the list. It should take no longer than any other system. note advantages only when you need a tiebreaker. and note triumphs.

Lightsabers in my game have the weapon trait Awkward Balance which upgrades combat difficulty twice unless the weilder has a Force Rating.

Yes. This makes sense. General Grievous was terribly uncoordinated with his lightsaber combat.

Also that one Qel-Droma lad who had the Force stripped from him.

Oh, and the leader of Deathwatch and his clumsy way with the darksaber.

With General Grevious I have heard a theory that he was Master Cypho Dyas but after having had significant cybernetics. I don't know where that theory comes from and I have no preference myself but even if he isn't and has no Force sensitivity his arms were cybernetic and could have programming to handle safety distances, they also care nothing about the balance of a weapon.

As to the other two they are EU and I have no real knowledge of them, that said the little I do know Qel-Droma had been trained and likely had a decent number of ranks which would handily deal with that.

In the end though, if you don't like those rules don't use them. They are for my group anyway.

As you said, these are house rules so it's no biggie. But I feel I should point out that the "Deathwatch" guy he was talking (Pre Vizsla) about is from The Clone Wars (and is canon). You can see him in action HERE if you'd like (video contains spoilers for the show, obviously). I obviously disagree with your ruling, but since I run my own game it's no biggie. :-)

I haven't had much need for house rules myself, other than clearing up mechanics that leave a lot of questions like Blast against Minions. I rule it does Blast damage times the number of minions minus one instance of their soak; thus making it highly effective against minions, yes.

I'm also very lax on refunding exp. Or to be more specific, I had a player that dumped so much exp into a non-career skill that he had enough to buy a whole new career; so I let him. It actually seemed rather natural, as the character (not the player) was clearly leaning towards what that career exemplified anyway (the player had never looked at the career, I myself pointed it out to them). I also plan on retroactively refunding the exp "savings" my group's one force sensitive character would have saved should the group ever get a Mentor. Basically I let players spend "wasted" exp in ways that make sense; as I do not like the idea of players getting punished based on plot and the idea of honing your skills in Brawl and Coercion to BECOME a Marauder just seems to fit the narrative play-style of the game.

I have white boards, I have all sorts of tools. With this game you have 3 different stats you use to help with initiative. I have 9 players, as I said, plus NPC's. Rolling the stats, no problem. But compiling the results and then placing them in order every round of initiative is what bogs it down. So I'm wanting to simplify it some, that's why I wanted to see if anyone else had come up with their own way to do initiative. Not really complaining here, just throwing out the who, what, when, where, and why

Awesome to see so many responses to this thread.

I want to change initiative because it is a pain to use, as is, considering I have 9 people playing in my game. More than anything, it bogs my combat down. Heck, determining iniative usually takes longer than the combat itself, and that is a detriment to my game imho.

What is bogging you down with initiative? I have never had it bog down. Everytime I have played you call for a player to go and someone will speak up and go or there might be but rarely is their a debate as to who is going to go.

As to a combat manager. get a white board. make up magnetic markers for players and NPCs. have everyone roll ask for who has the highest number of successes and write that down and stick a magnetic player marker. repeat on down the list. It should take no longer than any other system. note advantages only when you need a tiebreaker. and note triumphs.

I always allow my group the option to swap initiative slots around at the start of the round, but by default the each person keeps the initiative they rolled. We found that the initiative system as written needlessly bogged things down and caused 'disagreements' as to who would go when.

But try to remember that the initiative order is only determined at the start of the combat, you do not swap around after the first round.

Forgot a houserule. If 3 advantages or one triumph is rolled in an initiative roll for 1st round the character or enemy can get a free bonus move action, but only for the first round. Also if intiative are a tie the most triumph or advantages goes 1st on tie

Awesome to see so many responses to this thread.

I want to change initiative because it is a pain to use, as is, considering I have 9 people playing in my game. More than anything, it bogs my combat down. Heck, determining iniative usually takes longer than the combat itself, and that is a detriment to my game imho. Keep in mind that there are 3 different things you keep track of to determine iniaitive order, with 9 people PLUS npc's that can bog it down a bit. I'd love to see "Combat Manager" used for this system as well, it works absolutely amazing for my Pathfinder games, but iniative is much simpler in Pathfinder as well.

I have also had problems with initiative bogging things down. We have no problems with the dynamic PC slot system; everyone is pretty cool about that. Our problem is tabulating the dice pool results. It just takes too long.

I've always disliked initiative in general. It breaks up the drama. IMHO, the beginning of a combat scenario in a TTRPG should be one of the most intense and dramatic moments of the game. Instead, the drama is broken by the need to get all crunchy about who gets to go when. I was contemplating bringing in some d20s and just doing good old fashioned D&D initiative. Instead, I am going to try an experiment.

I am going to attempt to institute a new initiative system with the narrative dice. Each PC or NPC will get one green die to add to a party pool. GM rolls for NPCs, one player rolls for PCs, tabulate successes, advantages as tie breakers, total tie=total reroll. Whoever gets the best total roll (PCs or NPCs) gets the first initiative slot. After that, combat rotates; PC, NPC, PC, NPC, etc. Any PC or NPC may take any slot in their order. "Surprise attack" situations give the party with the upper hand a blue die to add to pool. In an imbalanced encounter situation (say, 5 PCs vs. 2 NPCs), parities rotate initiative slots until the smaller party runs out, then the larger party finishes the round.

Inherent issues with this: No benefit for having high Vigilance or Cool; faster PCs and NPCs don't get better rolls; less randomization of initiative order and possibly reduced realism as a result.

However, in general, I believe this will speed initiative up. My goal is to keep the drama and tension high and the action flowing. I'll reply to this thread after our next session and let y'all know how it went in practice.

I am open to constructive criticism on this idea. My goal is not to be "fair" or keep things within the RAW. My goal is to streamline initiative so that rolling it does less to impact the drama at the table. I'm hopeful this will lead to improved immersion in the group. The immersion that comes from the narrative dice is part of what I like about this system. The RAW initiative rules have been breaking that for us.

I have also had problems with initiative bogging things down. We have no problems with the dynamic PC slot system; everyone is pretty cool about that. Our problem is tabulating the dice pool results. It just takes too long.

I've always disliked initiative in general. It breaks up the drama. IMHO, the beginning of a combat scenario in a TTRPG should be one of the most intense and dramatic moments of the game. Instead, the drama is broken by the need to get all crunchy about who gets to go when. [...]

I have given this a bit of thought as well. I agree that as a GM, I find it jarring to suddenly stop the action to find out everyone's initiative at a point that should be the most dramatic. I've also had a problem for a while with the linear progression of actions of previous systems. I feel like FFG has moved in the right direction with "open initiative", but I still feel like I'm ready to move a step or two more towards the free-form narrative side.

In addition, I wanted combat to feel more like combat from a movie, and less of a tactical simulation where every side gets an action because of fairness to the rules of the game. I wanted to see momentum shift from the players to the villains, back to the players. I wanted to keep the creativity of players driving the action, so I knew I wanted open slots for initiative, but I also never like the fact that because there was someone with quick reflexes in the party, the slowest member could act first. Most importantly though, I didn't want to track it. I wanted a system that would be clear from the actions just completed and the dice just thrown, what should happen next. So...

What I've been trying for a while now, is making initiative an opposed roll (still Vigilance or Cool mostly) between the character that wishes to act first against the target or obstacle of that action. No one else needs to roll initiative because no one else is involved in the first action. This allows the speedy character to shine and go first, but would still allow the slow character to attempt to go first. Depending on the first roll, one of the two involved characters will get a turn. To simulate momentum, I've been allowing 2 or 3 advantage (I'm still working on which feels better) to be spent to keep the momentum on the same side, otherwise an opposing character takes a turn. This is extra advantage from regular uses, so the players that roll 2/3 advantage have to make a choice to give an ally a boost or upgrade but let the enemy have a turn, or keep momentum on their side and allow an ally to take a turn, but with no added benefit. I was worried about abuse, but my players will often choose to activate a critical hit or pile upgrades on a single ally, while allowing the enemies to get a shot in, if it suits their purpose. The same rules apply to NPCs, which has also increased the threat of a single Nemesis, as with enough advantage, that Sith Lord could get in 5 or 6 hits before the party of 6 even has a chance. That being said, that might ideal not be for every group, but for me, I love watching the story of the heroes that get beat down, only to switch momentum to their side and completely wipe the floor with the enemies - just like my favourite action movies.

Advantages:

-NO book-keeping for initiative

-quick startup for combat

-rewards players with initiative skills (when they want to go first)

-levels playing field for small/large PC groups against different numbers of threats

-allows 'the heroic journey' - from all hope is lost, to saving the day

Disadvantages:

-combat can randomly be one-sided (either for or against the PCs) (although it hasn't happened in my games... yet)

-some players might get left behind if they feel like they have nothing to add to an encounter (good encounter design still should apply, and you could still have the rule that each player must have a turn before starting over)

-eats through advantages (player resource), so opportunity is lost to do other cool stuff

Those are my thoughts on the subject of house-ruling initiative. I'm interested to know if anyone thinks it might be interesting to try, or if you think that these rules wouldn't work for your group and why not. I can see how it wouldn't be for every group, but it's been working for me! Anything that keeps me and my players in the story and out of the book-keeping is a positive move, in my opinion.

I don't bother with the XP tax for purchasing additional specializations. In-career and universal specs cost 20XP, out-of-career specs cost 30XP.

I wish for this so much it's unreal. The last thing I really enjoy when building a character, is having to spend a lot of points not doing anything.

I've played quite a bit, but have GM'd only a couple sessions. While playing I jotted down 5 House Rules I'll be using for games I run.

1 - Demolitions: I made a separate Demolitions skill (it needs its own)

2 - Initiative: Successes = 10, Advantages = 1 Example; If you roll 2 successes and 1 advantage, your initiative roll is a 21 (makes it easy to drop in initiative trackers, like in Roll20). You can delay, but there is no ready action. Triumphs are used for tiebreakers.

3 - Autofire: You can engage a number of additional targets equal to the number of upgrades you have in the skill. Example; You can engage 2 additional targets beyond your initial target if you've trained in it twice.

4 - Languages (they are important in my games): As per the rules, you know the language of any party members. My rule adds an exception for specials like Bothan Wrendui or Twilek Lekku. For every skill rank you buy in the Education skill you can read/write a new language. You can also try to understand a language you do not know by using the Education skill vs an Upgraded Formidable.

5 - Disruptors & Starship Cloaking Devices: Banned... because they are being used in a Star Trek game somewhere.