Hi All,

I'm new to Gming and a couple weeks back I tried out the Force and Destiny beginner game and found lightsabers to be very OP. One of PC's just walked up to the Boss and stabbed him and then it was over. I have some concerns around this, so I was curious if anyone had any useful house rules? How do you avoid your PC's wading through your NPC's? How do you avoid NPC's maiming PC's all the time?

What I was thinking was this:

Not only are lightsabers going to be hard to find/construct and make the PC's a target for the Empire, but I was also thinking of upgrading the difficulty to Daunting, disconecting the skill from brawn, and reducing their die number to their force rating (usually 1) and PC's must spend a force point to use the lightsaber for defending or attacking. That does mess with some of the skill trees that say you can now use your agility instead of brawn, though.

I was also going to make the skill cost a lot of xp, unless if they have a mentor/holocron, but still make it a lot That way, they can quest to find/make one, but even then, they have to train for a while to be able to use a lightsaber.

The problem I run into is that Lightsaber is a career skill in some of the trees, so I was going to say they can also take Melee as a career skill and use a sword or vibroknife/vibroaxe where applicable. Maybe players that train in melee receive a boost die when they finally get a lightsaber and use it.

I figure, Padawans build their own lightsabers as part of their trials, and it took Luke a while to learn how to effectively use his lightsaber and he had Yoda and Ben training him. But then does that take the fun out of the game?

What about Cortosis armor? It's supposed to be rare, so not everyone can have it. Plus the PC's would loot the bodies and then be invincible, ya?

Thanks for any advice.

It really sounds like you had some big issues with light sabers. For my group, I have five FU who plan on getting lightsabers at some point. I don't really have a problem with them. For big baddies (like those at the end of Mountaintop Rescue and Lure of the Lost, I have added Adversary 1 (or 2) in the past, upgrading combat difficulties against the NPCs. This has helped a bit with the light sabers. I also play with conflict a lot. Do the party members NEED to kill all these people with their lightsabers? Is there another way, or are they using lightsabers because they are powerful and fast (the path to the darkside is easy and powerful). As for protecting my party from lightsabers, I don't. Luke, Dooku, Windu, Anakin, and Vader all had parts sliced off because of them, and Obi Wan was maimed with one (his leg). They are dangerous weapons. In the end, I just increased the number of baddies (stormtroopers, raiders, etc) knowing they could cut through them faster, and they (the bad guys) did so much more damage on the whole. More minions in a group means the combat rolls are higher, and they take longer to take down. A rival or Nemesis with a rank of Adversary (or a couple ranks) makes him a little more difficult. Just make sure you use the narrative to your advantage. The PCs miss an attack, it isn't because they missed, the inquisitor deflected their thrust with a well timed slice (just a narrative for theme).

I also have been known to increase the wound number on bad guys when I want them to stick around a little bit.

In the end, I would say that if you are worried about lightsabers in the campaign, maybe you should think about letting them into your campaign until the group is ready for them? Many suggest not allowing them until knight level. At that point, the baddies the group would be facing might have better defenses, and who knows, maybe a nemesis with Cortosis weave armor. I wouldn't have cortosis all over the place though, it is supposed to be rare too, and if it was all over, I would soon end up with a party wearing salvaged cortosis : )

I hope this helps.

The Beginner Box adventure is a bad guide for how and when lightsabers should be added to the group, as well as the type of opposition they should be facing.

The core rulebook itself suggests that around "Knight Level" (150 XP) is when PCs should realistically expect to have lightsabers.

Frankly, the actual game itself plays a lot better, especially if you hold off on the PCs getting proper lightsabers until they've reached at least 50 earned XP.

Thing also with lightsabers is that the PCs should generally be cautious about using them too openly. Consider the Rebels TVs series, in particular the first season, where even with the "cat out of the bag" in regards to Kanan being a Jedi his first response wasn't "draw my lightsaber" but was instead to go for his blaster pistol.

You also don't need to massively bolster the level of opposition, just instead make the combats take place in situations where drawing a lightsaber isn't the most desirable option. Remember that during the default time frame that this game is set in (Rebellion Era), the Jedi have a bad rap thanks to nearly two decades of Imperial propaganda placing all the faults of the Republic and horrors of the Clone Wars at the feet of the Jedi Order.

Frankly, adding Cortosis is something that should be done very sparingly; let's face it, the lightsaber is probably one of the coolest weapons in all of science-fiction, and if the PCs have properly quested to obtain one, they're going to want to get to enjoy the perks of said weapon, which includes being able to chew through mooks like nobody's business.

The suggestions the OP made to "balance" a lightsaber are completely unnecessary, and will more than likely utterly kill the campaign. What should be done instead is throw slightly larger minion groups and/or more of them at the party. It's a similar tactic to handle the issues of autofire-capable weapons; simply give the PCs that can generate such high damage output more targets to occupy them.

The only enemies that should be beefed-up are the combat-centric Nemesis opponents. In that regard, the Beginner Box fails horribly as the BBEG of Mountaintop Rescue is an utter cream-puff. I did some test combat using proper starting PCs from both EotE and AoR, which included at least two combat-capable PCs in each group, and they really didn't have much of a problem taking him down, with the Wookiee Hired Gun/Marauder simply brutalizing the poor yutz in the opening round with his vibro-ax being the biggest "offender" in those cases, although the Soldier/Sharpshooter came awfully close.

Phooey on lightsabers. A dual wielding marauder of even moderate skill is FAR worse on my poor minions than some Kung Fu monk with a glowing sword.

Thanks for all the replies! This has been super helpful!

My group is forming this weekend so I will have a better idea of who wants a lightsaber and who doesn't. Some folks who I tried the Beginner Campaign with really disliked the anti-climatic boss fight. He was a total cream-puff!

Good advice! Thanks again!

I GMed the FaD beginner game (including the lure of the lost) and the boss is purposely build that way in order to be beatable with the 2 weakest characters (the doctor and the unarmed guy). I added a rival to Malefax, gave him adversary 1 and parry 2 and the party (3 lightsaber users) still defeated kinda easily. When I ran the lure of the lost I gave the final boss a make over and the battle was long and exciting and (just barely) the party lost.

My group is forming this weekend so I will have a better idea of who wants a lightsaber and who doesn't. Some folks who I tried the Beginner Campaign with really disliked the anti-climatic boss fight. He was a total cream-puff!

Well, what will probably help is that starting characters in Force and Destiny can't begin with a proper lightsaber; the best they can manage is a training lightsaber for 400 credits that only does stun damage.

Just make sure that the first adventure you run doesn't end with them getting lightsaber crystals. As noted, try to plan things so that by the time the group reaches 150XP earned (roughly 10 sessions assuming an average award of 15XP per session), that's when they are able to obtain proper lightsaber crystals.

The Beta book had what I thought was a pretty decent "starter crystal" that was made available at the end of the adventure, in that it provided Damage 6, Crit 3, Breach 1, and Sunder, but could only be modified a few times (two +1 damage mods, a single -1 to crit rating mod, and a single +1 Vicious mod).

The group I'm in is still using training lightsabers at around 500xp. They're still effective and fun. We're looking forward to building our own full lightsabers, but definitely don't mind that we don't have them yet, and I at least will continue to have a training lightsaber around for those times that I don't need to be doing lethal damage.

I was going to say that training sabers would be the best way to go. Or go with a slightly weaker crystal to avoid stun damage but now have all the additional mods. Say 5 damage and being able to crit should ease the pain some.

I like the idea of the training lightsabers. I was hesitant to make the lightsabers less powerful because they are flipping lightsabers! They are supposed to be crazy awesome. That's why I went for the tactic of making them harder to use. But I am concerned tweaking the rules will ruin the game play.

As mentioned above, beefing up the npc's seems like the best way to go. I'll have to do that in the long run anyway, when/if the pc's get a lightsaber.

I'm glad to see it hasn't been an issue in your games.

As a GM the NPC Adversary Tallent is your friend in any situation. Adjusting NPC's on the fly is easy and a great way to help balance an encounter that's too easy/hard

Well, the thing is, if you check the movies, comics, etc. characters wielding lightsabers have an easy time to defeat nearly anything. And still have fights with a proper climax. Those are meant to be, of course, fights against other lightsaber users.

If you think lightsabers are over, please never, never and I mean never let your players put their hands on a heavy blaster rifle. Nothing breaks the climax more than 4 shots at 18 damage each in the very first action of the combat.

Well, the thing is, if you check the movies, comics, etc. characters wielding lightsabers have an easy time to defeat nearly anything. And still have fights with a proper climax. Those are meant to be, of course, fights against other lightsaber users.

If you think lightsabers are over, please never, never and I mean never let your players put their hands on a heavy blaster rifle. Nothing breaks the climax more than 4 shots at 18 damage each in the very first action of the combat.

Especially when the group has a ridiculously Vigilant scout and stupidly Cool face, the gun bunny will love to say "stand back and watch this..."

My previous character was an ex-stormtrooper hired gun. We received a heavy blaster rifle in a published adventure and it was a beast. I remember an encounter that opened with a group of thugs saying "they had us outnumbered." Smuggler friend says "look again" as I opened up and rolled enough triumphs and advantages to mow the whole group down in one action.

Yeah, Autofire is king of the mountain in terms of broke-tastic combat mechanics.

As for dealing with lightsaber-using PCs, don't be shy about occasionally providing some of the higher-tier baddies with the Parry talent, even if they are Rivals. Yes, as Rivals they'll be taking that 3 strain as wounds, but if they've got Parry 4 or 5, that means they're not taking nearly as much damage from a lightsaber strike, which will enable them to last an extra round or two before going down. However, don't do it all the time though, otherwise you're going to have a similar problem as you would by giving all your bad guys armor with the Cortosis quality.

I had a Hired Gun character that looted a really great blaster rifle. My assigned role for the group was dps and everyone else spent exp in non-combat skills. It was a lot fun and the GM was good about sending enough baddies for combat to still be fun.

I was more concerned about everyone wanting a lightsaber, which could be like everyone having a heavy blaster!

Thanks for all the positive feedback and advice! I plan on talking it through with my group and seeing how they feel about it.

Ria5964, on 30 Nov 2015 - 5:46 PM, said:Ria5964, on 30 Nov 2015 - 5:46 PM, said:

Hi All,

I'm new to Gming and a couple weeks back I tried out the Force and Destiny beginner game and found lightsabers to be very OP. One of PC's just walked up to the Boss and stabbed him and then it was over. I have some concerns around this, so I was curious if anyone had any useful house rules? How do you avoid your PC's wading through your NPC's? How do you avoid NPC's maiming PC's all the time?

What I was thinking was this:

Not only are lightsabers going to be hard to find/construct and make the PC's a target for the Empire, but I was also thinking of upgrading the difficulty to Daunting, disconecting the skill from brawn, and reducing their die number to their force rating (usually 1) and PC's must spend a force point to use the lightsaber for defending or attacking. That does mess with some of the skill trees that say you can now use your agility instead of brawn, though.

I was also going to make the skill cost a lot of xp, unless if they have a mentor/holocron, but still make it a lot That way, they can quest to find/make one, but even then, they have to train for a while to be able to use a lightsaber.

The problem I run into is that Lightsaber is a career skill in some of the trees, so I was going to say they can also take Melee as a career skill and use a sword or vibroknife/vibroaxe where applicable. Maybe players that train in melee receive a boost die when they finally get a lightsaber and use it.

I figure, Padawans build their own lightsabers as part of their trials, and it took Luke a while to learn how to effectively use his lightsaber and he had Yoda and Ben training him. But then does that take the fun out of the game?

What about Cortosis armor? It's supposed to be rare, so not everyone can have it. Plus the PC's would loot the bodies and then be invincible, ya?

Thanks for any advice.

Play by raw instead of changing everything. What your rules would do is removing the fun of playing a force user by making it harder than being a hired gun and shooting someone with a heavy blaster.

The beginner box was badly designed so I can understand you felt disapointed. The boss should have at least on or two rank in parry and the adversay talent.

My previous character was an ex-stormtrooper hired gun. We received a heavy blaster rifle in a published adventure and it was a beast. I remember an encounter that opened with a group of thugs saying "they had us outnumbered." Smuggler friend says "look again" as I opened up and rolled enough triumphs and advantages to mow the whole group down in one action.

"We are not outnumbered! We are in a target-rich environment!"

But yeah, Lightsabers are pretty awesome, but not game-breaking. They're already harder to use if you don't have a Lightsaber spec, for two reasons. First, they're going to be pricey to learn. I don't think I would be willing to drop more than one skill rank on something before cross-speccing for it. They also rely on Brawn, but they don't add Brawn to damage. So a Brawn-heavy character may just want to hang onto that vibro-axe. A lightsaber might be a bit better for laying down the hurt, but the difference is small. The axe is also a lot cheaper, uses a common skill, and doesn't paint an inquisitorial bullseye on the wielder's forehead.

Oh, also, a lot of the lightsaber's awesomeness comes from modifications. Trouble is, this is that rare instance where the attachment (the crystal) is by far the most expensive part of the weapon. You do NOT want to screw up the mechanics check when trying to, say, reduce the crit rating.

One of PC's just walked up to the Boss and stabbed him and then it was over.

That is kinda the point of Lightsabers, they are something you cannot afford to get hit by. Unless you are specially trained to handle someone that is trained in their use you are trouble. Now there are plenty of ways to mitigate this of course, without nerfing the actual lightsaber.

Give your big bad guys ranks in Adversary. Rolling a couple red dice for that melee check might encourage players to seek some different options with less terrible consequences for messing up. A despair with a heavy blaster rifle isn't as dangerous as a despair while using a lightsaber.

More roleplay consequences to openly using lightsabers. People start to not want to associate with obvious force wielders for fear of the Empire, while they also draw unwanted attention from the Empire's agents.

Have some bad guys have cortosis weave in their armor or weapons making them resistant to the lightsabers.

The Dodge skill is also useful. Nothing says you can't give minions this skill either. Sure they'll take a few wounds but if they get hit they likely are dead anyway. Minions with dodge 3 could be a nasty proposition for a PC to deal with.

Sadly a guy with a light repeating blaster rifle and Jury rig which is incredibly cheap to get XP wise will outperform a character with a lightsaber with the same xp total any day of the week and twice on sunday.

My players are nearing 1100 xp and each have one, two, or double bladed sabers. Just had them in a tight hallway with two Dark troopers and a dozen stormtroopers and they barely got out of there. The key was using adversary for the dark troopers and making the minions a little tougher. That and a tight hallway where only two of the players can be in melee really makes it more difficult

I wouldn't fret too much, if anything Force Sensitive characters start off weaker that mundanes with an autofire-capable blaster on account of the fact that lightsaber combat is very dependant upon talents and force powers. Mastering a heavy blaster rifle is very easy, becoming even a passable Jedi is very hard.

Sure, your would-be Jedi Knights will eventually be able to effortlessly defeat equivalent-XP mundane PC's and Villians, but you'll have plenty of experience balancing your encounters by the time killing skilled enemies with their own blaster fire is a normal PC manoeuvre.

The only thing that makes lightsabers superior to heavy blaster pistols is the ignoring of 10 points of armor..... and that few of the talents crossover between them.

Abusive munchkinning can be taught a lesson or two with snipers... the lightsaber combat is weak against long ranged weapons.

Abusive munchkinning can be taught a lesson or two with snipers... the lightsaber combat is weak against long ranged weapons.

Wait... How is the the Sniper not the munchkin in this equation? Being skilled with a Lightsaber is way more xp intensive than being good with a blaster!

Abusive munchkinning can be taught a lesson or two with snipers... the lightsaber combat is weak against long ranged weapons.

Wait... How is the the Sniper not the munchkin in this equation? Being skilled with a Lightsaber is way more xp intensive than being good with a blaster!

I think it's more of illustrating to PCs that have lightsabers that as potent as said weapons are, they are not the absolute king of the mountain when it comes to combat.