I'm in a group that's been playing Force & Destiny for a few months now. Early on we misread (or, more accurately, misremembered) the wound threshold rules and were playing as though the penalty for characters exceeding their threshold was that every hit against them was an automatic crit, but they would otherwise remain conscious. Strain worked normally, with exceeding the threshold meaning effective unconsciousness.

We soon realized our error, but decided to continue playing this way because it seemed like fights would end too quickly otherwise. It just seemed like most decent weapons could easily one- or two-shot a character, even with a decent number of ranks in toughened. We wanted our fights to be a little more cinematic, so we decided to treat pre-threshold wounds as "plot armour". Unfortunately, it has skewed too far the opposite direction and many fights drag a little, ultimately boiling down to "who can roll highest on a d100?".

Starting next session, we're thinking about implementing an additional rule that once you've exceeded your wound threshold, if the combined total difficulty to heal all your crits equals or exceeds PPPPP you fall unconscious. So, you could have 4 P crits and be fine, or 2 PP crits, but the second you have, for instance, PP, PP, and P (or PPPP and P, etc.), you go down.

I guess I have two questions:

1) Have people playing jedi-focused campaigns found our fears to be justified? Are fights short, with high risk of unconsciousness and low risk of death?

2) What do people think of our solution? Five diamonds might not be exactly the right number, but the general idea seems really solid to me, so I wanted to see what others thought.

(I should also note that I personally hate house rules and avoid them whenever possible, and have talked to my GM about just trying the rules as written, but he strongly believes it would be problematic, and I do somewhat share his concerns.)

So, I've got a 370 Earned XP SWTOR era game where the PCs are Sith apprentices. We've run it rules as written and I've found the normal rules work just fine, with Parry and other defensive talents doing their job on the PC end and Adversary + Parry working great so far for the NPCs. My only issue is one of my players is stacking Vicious with Lethal Blows to be a powerful alpha-striker, but he's pretty low on defense so it works out to be fairly balanced overall.

I'd recommend you guys give it a go with the rules as written, even if just in a one shot to test it out. They work pretty well in my opinion.

I had mentioned to my GM that parry and reflect seemed like the solution to quick combats, but he rightly pointed out that not every specialization has easy or reliable access to those talents and fully relying on them also makes sabre-less builds less viable. I will still point him to this thread if enough people chime in and say the RAW has been working out great for them. He's just approaching the issue from a perspective of mathematical skepticism.

Every lightsabre duel you see in the movies is obviously rife with parrying, and it does seem from a perspective of realism that if someone swings a sword at you, the only ways you're not getting severely hurt are if you parry it, dodge it, or have strong enough armour to withstand it. In that sense, the RAW feels pretty realistic, except that lightsabres bypass almost all armour and dodging isn't well-supported by the rules, so parry's really the only game in town and isn't universally available.

I guess more to the point, does every character in your party have multiple ranks in parry and/or deflect? Do they all wield lightsabres?

Combats aren't designed to last more then a few rounds, 4-5 tops.

It should be like in the movies, quick action-packed encounters with an identifiable goal.

I think if you rule that characters above and beyond their wound treshold are still conscious, then you'll probably draw out your encounters. You'll also probably remove the threat of combat, not of death but being fear of being defeated quickly.

In my play group, 2 characters have 2 ranks of Dodge, 1 character has the defensive control upgrade from the Sense Power, 1 character has 2 ranks in both parry and reflect, while the last doesn't have any defense bonus except being a long range fighter with a sniper rifle. Fights usually last a few rounds ; once in a while a character is knocked out ; a few crits here and there. It's not rare to use 1 or 2 stims during a fight to stay up.

Maybe your GM could drop his maths predictions and trust the Devs, the Beta testers and the horde of other players that use RAW. I don't remember anyone asking about some house rule like yours.

Also, saber-oriented builds are potent, but they can be easily countered with some good ranged weapons, NPC tactics and movement, and some inquisitor lerking not far from the action.

1. I suppose it depends on what you mean by "short." Combat rounds are supposed represent anywhere up to about a minute's worth of action. So if you go down in 4 rounds, that can be 4 minutes of trading fire/blows with your enemy. That is quite a long fight scene by most cinematic standards If you find fights "too quick," check that you are utilizing the narrative dice and telling a full story, instead of just saying "I hit the guy with my lightsaber and deal 9 damage and one crit." Narrate movement (whether or not you performed a Move maneuver); exchanging attacks and parries from multiple angles; dodging stuff; popping up over your cover and then ducking back down, several times, to try and get a clean shot; in-character dialogue...you get the idea, I'm sure. Desslok and others have posted some great game-mechanical deconstructions of classic Star Wars film battles to illustrate this point, might be worth checking out.

2. EDIT: Read the OP wrong. Nothing to see here, carry on

Houserules are all well and good, but I'd echo the common sentiment that you might do well to at least try out the rules as written, and see how you like it as a change.

1) Even in non-jedi games, fights don't usually last more than 3-5 rounds. Remember that the back and forth parrying you see in the movies (especially the PT) is not representative of over a dozen attack rolls and activations of parry. Each combat round can last up to a minute of in-game time. When you make an attack check, it's more than one swing. When you parry, you parry more than once. If you are looking for fights that take longer in round duration, your GM needs to set up encounters where more needs to be done than stand there and attack each other. I've had players go unconscious to the first attack roll in several fights simply because the minions got super lucky. I've lost entire minion groups in the first player action. Once, I had my nemesis of the story arc get blasted away before anything else happened. There are many many ways to make encounters more interesting, too many to list here. But if all anyone does is attack, move, attack, attack, move attack, etc, fights are fast, and can be boring. Especially if they don't need to use any maneuvers for anything other than aiming.

2) Personally, I find this house rule to be more limiting than the RAW. If you don't fall unconscious, you keep taking crits. If you keep taking crits, you die. Even if the combine difficulty reaches 5 dice and you drop unconscious then, it's still a much more lethal variation. I see it making the first fight last another round, or two. Then, the next fight, players still have some crits. Then, they die. And if your GM sets up the sessions such that in between fights the group can heal every single crit, then what's the point of adjusting the combat to dole out many more crits? If all you want is to drag out fight scenes, and keep people from dropping unconscious "too fast," then just do something like increase every player's wound threshold by 10.

I guess more to the point, does every character in your party have multiple ranks in parry and/or deflect? Do they all wield lightsabres?

I have 4 PCs in that game. Two use lightsabers,one is focusing on Parry and Makashi shenanigans, the other has some Parry from Soresu but opted to bomb down Assassin to be a critical hit beast. Its been a while since we played a whole group game due to schedules, but I don't think either has Deflect.

The two others are more skill focused, one is doing a mix of Force powers (Especially Heal/Harm) and social skills who uses melee weapons a la the old Sith, the other is a Shadow who is focused on being stealthy - except when he whips out a blaster to put the hurt down.

It's hard to compare the lightsaber fighters to the two skill focused guys because only the lightsaber guys are focusing on weapon combat.

I've had players go unconscious to the first attack roll in several fights simply because the minions got super lucky. I've lost entire minion groups in the first player action. Once, I had my nemesis of the story arc get blasted away before anything else happened.

These are exactly the sorts of things we've been worried about happening with the RAW. Combats like those don't seem fun to play, and they don't seem very good for the story.

Personally, I find this house rule to be more limiting than the RAW. If you don't fall unconscious, you keep taking crits. If you keep taking crits, you die. Even if the combine difficulty reaches 5 dice and you drop unconscious then, it's still a much more lethal variation. I see it making the first fight last another round, or two. Then, the next fight, players still have some crits. Then, they die. And if your GM sets up the sessions such that in between fights the group can heal every single crit, then what's the point of adjusting the combat to dole out many more crits? If all you want is to drag out fight scenes, and keep people from dropping unconscious "too fast," then just do something like increase every player's wound threshold by 10.

The way we've been playing is definitely more lethal in the sense that each character is much more likely to rack up enough crits to die while still conscious than otherwise, but I think that's a feature, not a flaw. The RAW is much more lethal in the sense that the chances of the whole party getting knocked out quickly are higher, ultimately resulting in a TPK. In practice, with the system we've been using, characters past their wound threshold pull back as soon as they start racking up crits. The chances of death feel very real, which makes the fights exciting.

What I don't like about this system is how long it takes for us to win after victory becomes all but inevitable. Once you've lobbed a guy's arm off and he's indefinitely staggered, it seems silly to have to keep hacking away at him to actually put him down, but sometimes rolling high enough on a d100 is hard. I think the proposed revision splits the difference well between the two extremes: the fights offer real chances of death without everyone being so fragile that one or more players effectively sits the fight out after getting knocked out in the first round.

Either way, I showed everyone's responses to my GM and I think we're going to try RAW next week and see how it goes. We remain somewhat skeptical, but take the point that we should at least try it. I'll personally be happy to ditch the house rules if it works out. Thanks for all the feedback, everyone!

The design of the wound/crit system is intentional, and works on several levels.

First, fights are fast. When I've been lucky enough to play with experienced players, this is the fastest-paced game I've played (sorry, Savage Worlds! You know I still love you!).

Second, fights are dangerous. Most PCs can take two or three hits, and then they're down. In my opinion, this encourages avoiding combat, and fleeing whn outmatched

Third, fights are not especially lethal. Yeah, you can get incapacitated easily, but without Vicious weapons, you'll probably survive. And remember that the bad guys in Star Wars love to capture heroes. TPK by common thugs? They loot your body and leave you behind. By bounty hunters? You wake up in a Hutt's dungeon. By the Empire? You wake up in a slave colony. By a Wampa? You wake up in his cave and your TaunTaun is being eaten.

What I don't like about this system is how long it takes for us to win after victory becomes all but inevitable. Once you've lobbed a guy's arm off and he's indefinitely staggered, it seems silly to have to keep hacking away at him to actually put him down, but sometimes rolling high enough on a d100 is hard.

That's on the GM. There is a section in the rules about ending fights quickly when it's clear that they're over (sorry, AFB, but I think it's in the GM section). I usually have morale play into it somehow as well...if somebody's lost an arm, it doesn't have to turn into a Monty Python skit ("I'll bite your legs off!"). Any of the social skills can also come into play to get a surrender.

Think about movies narratively speaking; sometimes even the awesome badass characters get eaten by a shark. Or shot in the head, or blind sided and knocked out with strain damage, only to wake up in the aftermath to face a roughed up villian. e.c.t

In the movies, most characters fall after the first hit, either in personal combat or space combat.

- Luke survived twice, once shot on his engine in ANH and getting is hand cut off by Vader in ESB.

- Vader survived getting slashed to the upper arm in ESB... getting his arms and legs chopped off in RotS doesn't really count, he was out of combat, so was he after getting his hand chopped by Luke in RotJ.

- Leia survived a shot to the arm.

- Wedge survived getting shot once in ANH above Death Star 1.

So the get that same movie feel, characters need to go down pretty easily... they are down but not dead... so like many others said, they can then be captured, sold to slavery, put in a dungeon, brought before the Emperor, etc.

Also, don't be afraid to try RAW and make some mistakes... we all had a Nemesis fall on the first round, or a player knocked early on... you learn and tailor your encounters better next time...

I've had players go unconscious to the first attack roll in several fights simply because the minions got super lucky. I've lost entire minion groups in the first player action. Once, I had my nemesis of the story arc get blasted away before anything else happened.

These are exactly the sorts of things we've been worried about happening with the RAW. Combats like those don't seem fun to play, and they don't seem very good for the story.

Just because a player goes unconscious in the first round doesn't mean they can't get some stimpacks/force heal/medicine checked to regain consciousness. Triumphs on baddie checks and Despairs on PC checks can be used to bring more reinforcements to the battle (read: more minions show up). This can also be done with a dark side destiny point. And the nemesis thing, well, the first time was a surprise, I adapted. My next BBEG fight lasted about 5 or 6 rounds, and ended with him barely, I mean barely, scraping by on the last hit on him and managing to knock out the last party member, and then proceeding to have his droids lug them into prison cells where he could torture them at his leisure (the next session was a prison break). Nemesis design is an art form. As the game goes on, the GM should get better at it. Also, it's good to remember that not every showdown with the BBEG defeats them permanently. A lot of times the run away when they lose the advantage, or disappear almost magically when the good guys thought they had them cornered, or they get captured, only to escape from those darn dirty incompetent NPC allies later. I am a firm believer that a BBEG should rarely ever be permanently dealt with in the PCs first real showdown with them.

Ew no thank you. I GM a game with 6 players, 4 Jedi and 2 non Jedi, it's very rare that any combat has someone knocked out in the first round, why? Because you just need to be creative as the GM, don't focus fire especially you're squishes unless they give the enemies a really good reason (like wielding a heavy weapon with auto fire or gunnery weapon and spraying it everywhere). Second the whole party being knocked out isn't a tpk unless again your GM isn't feeling that creative. Rather the imperials might take you in custody and now you've got to break out of a prison facility without your gear, or maybe that gang that jumped you took some of your stuff and you wake up in an alley getting poked by a kid with a stick who knows where they went, etc. it should be pretty rare that your opponent is just looking to outright end you.

Another reason I wouldn't use this kind of house rule is healing, crits last a while and can't just be healed back to back to back, this means a few combats in a session and suddenly players are just dying because they have a bunch of unheard crits stacking up lest they are constantly spending months at a time just lying around in hospital beds. As for ways to extend combat if you want its not to hard. Use cover, use defensive stance, get someone with good armor and wounds to take on a tank role ie give them talents that draw the enemies attention or weapons that are scary enough that the enemy wants them down first, use advantages to give opponents set back, use stims, etc etc.

What my group ended up doing is the same as you - exceeding threshold doesn't knock you unconscious. The trick though, is every time you take a wound past threshold you have to make a discipline or resilience check at the hardest crit's difficulty to stay in the fight - to voluntarily push yourself past your body's limits. You can chose to automatically fail this check.

It feels pretty cinematic.

Your players might want to pay a pittance and buy some stim packs. Then use them during combat when needed to keep them from exceeding their wound threshold and passing out. My first character made it through a dozen fights before losing consciousness.

Of course, doing so means when you do go down, it hurts. it also means you pick up a lot of scars. (My character's torso looks like a target range, with over a dozen scars from blaster burns. As his grandfather mentioned once, "It is permissible to dodge occasionally. You don't have to catch them all!")

What my group ended up doing is the same as you - exceeding threshold doesn't knock you unconscious. The trick though, is every time you take a wound past threshold you have to make a discipline or resilience check at the hardest crit's difficulty to stay in the fight - to voluntarily push yourself past your body's limits. You can chose to automatically fail this check.

I kind of like this idea, though I might add the requirement for a Destiny Point.

Exceeding wound theshold doesn't necessarily mean passed out. Just unable to fight due to the pain, take obi wans first battle with dooku.

Exceeding wound theshold doesn't necessarily mean passed out. Just unable to fight due to the pain....

For example,

I'm playing EotE, rather than FaD, but one thing I've found is VITAL is making use of cover. Obviously this might not apply in a lightsaber duel, but if you aren't forcing your opponents to add as many setback dice as possible to their rolls then you are going to run out of wounds QUICKLY.

I'm playing EotE, rather than FaD, but one thing I've found is VITAL is making use of cover. Obviously this might not apply in a lightsaber duel, but if you aren't forcing your opponents to add as many setback dice as possible to their rolls then you are going to run out of wounds QUICKLY.

To build on this, picking the right ground to fight on should be a strong narrative incentive, such as fighting from the high ground.

Sure, not likely to get 3 cries, but stranger things have happened.

Desslok and others have posted some great game-mechanical deconstructions of classic Star Wars film battles to illustrate this point, might be worth checking out.

Yeah same here. I know I've read them. Perhaps Desslok might know where to find them.