Alternately, counter them with a party of four Technicians with Bad Motivator "Gee, you Jedi have been falling behind on your lightsaber maintenance, haven't you?"

do you not have to be engaged or short range to use this?

"Okay, here's the plan. You put me in a cannon and launch me at that space station. Then once I'm close enough, I'll be able to see something wrong with it and it will explode all on its own."

This looks like a job for the Human Bullet!

I'm curious what stats you're giving this group to give them 20 soak?

I take "Body Guarding" to mean exactly what it is. You're doing everything you have to do to protect your charge. You pull him out of the line of fire, you keep him pushing his head down to minimize is silhouette, and you tackle him to the ground to keep him safe when necessary. You even go as far as to step in front of the blaster shot when you have to, perfectly emulated by Improved Body Guard. Now if you have a circle of 2, 3, 4, or whatever each declaring Body Guard on each other, I'm perfectly within my rights as a GM to say your protective measures are hampering each other, which they would under those circumstances. I would simply declare you're falling over each other, each trying to protect your charge. It'd look like a game a morons game of ring-around-the-rosie with each person pulling and shoving the guy next to him! Not only would you not get Body Guards defensive bonus, I'm liable to give your opponent a Boost die because you've given him a tangle of 4 combined bodies to sight up instead of just one. I'm completely within my rights as a GM to penalize poor play and attempts to game the mechanics.

Also, Blast weapons work perfectly fine against force users. Blast states everyone within it's AoE suffers damage. This is not a type of attack that can be stopped by Parry or Reflect. There's plenty of examples in TCW show where grenades and other explosives work perfectly well against Jedi. A lightsaber simply can't stop AoE damage.

lol this was meant to be kinda of joke since mechanically it works, but realistically sorta kinda not really

Also my bad if i said soak they get 20 dmg reduction because wen they're all engaged with each other they cab use circle of shelter on each other with 3 ranks on reflect and parry and each person using it that basically 5 x 4 so 20 for each person

I'm curious what stats you're giving this group to give them 20 soak?

I take "Body Guarding" to mean exactly what it is. You're doing everything you have to do to protect your charge. You pull him out of the line of fire, you keep him pushing his head down to minimize is silhouette, and you tackle him to the ground to keep him safe when necessary. You even go as far as to step in front of the blaster shot when you have to, perfectly emulated by Improved Body Guard. Now if you have a circle of 2, 3, 4, or whatever each declaring Body Guard on each other, I'm perfectly within my rights as a GM to say your protective measures are hampering each other, which they would under those circumstances. I would simply declare you're falling over each other, each trying to protect your charge. It'd look like a game a morons game of ring-around-the-rosie with each person pulling and shoving the guy next to him! Not only would you not get Body Guards defensive bonus, I'm liable to give your opponent a Boost die because you've given him a tangle of 4 combined bodies to sight up instead of just one. I'm completely within my rights as a GM to penalize poor play and attempts to game the mechanics.

Also, Blast weapons work perfectly fine against force users. Blast states everyone within it's AoE suffers damage. This is not a type of attack that can be stopped by Parry or Reflect. There's plenty of examples in TCW show where grenades and other explosives work perfectly well against Jedi. A lightsaber simply can't stop AoE damage.

lol this was meant to be kinda of joke since mechanically it works, but realistically sorta kinda not really

Also my bad if i said soak they get 20 dmg reduction because wen they're all engaged with each other they cab use circle of shelter on each other with 3 ranks on reflect and parry and each person using it that basically 5 x 4 so 20 for each person

I would say that by using Bodyguard on the first guy in the group will result in you interrupting his ability to do anything. This way he is unable to act other than to get up if pushed to the ground etc... The same can be said of trying to do Circle of Shelter after doing Bodyguard. Only the first person that is not interrupted by the Bodyguard can act. Everyone else is just stuck and forced to keep themselves upright.

Just play to the weakness the characters have.

No social skills

No survival skills

No stealth skills

Circle of shelter and reflect are easy to shutdown just give 1 dude a slug thrower with auto fire and cortosis jacketed slugs.

Then short out everyone's light sabers. Or disarm them. Or knock them down or entangle them. Parry and reflect are less then useful against stun weapons, because they aren't actually reducing the damage by much.

lol this was meant to be kinda of joke since mechanically it works, but realistically sorta kinda not really

Also my bad if i said soak they get 20 dmg reduction because wen they're all engaged with each other they cab use circle of shelter on each other with 3 ranks on reflect and parry and each person using it that basically 5 x 4 so 20 for each person

Fair enough. The "everyone Body Guards the guy to the right" would prolly look really silly in practice. I do get what you're going for though.

As for Reflect, I wouldn't allow more then 1 character's Reflect to be applied to each attack. I don't think anything official has ever been discussed, probably because it's never really come up. I definitely wouldn't allow a multiple Reflects against a single attack roll though. It might just be me, and I'm fine if that's the case. Though I see the odds of this ever occurring to be pretty slim at best.

lol this was meant to be kinda of joke since mechanically it works, but realistically sorta kinda not really

Also my bad if i said soak they get 20 dmg reduction because wen they're all engaged with each other they cab use circle of shelter on each other with 3 ranks on reflect and parry and each person using it that basically 5 x 4 so 20 for each person

Fair enough. The "everyone Body Guards the guy to the right" would prolly look really silly in practice. I do get what you're going for though.

As for Reflect, I wouldn't allow more then 1 character's Reflect to be applied to each attack. I don't think anything official has ever been discussed, probably because it's never really come up. I definitely wouldn't allow a multiple Reflects against a single attack roll though. It might just be me, and I'm fine if that's the case. Though I see the odds of this ever occurring to be pretty slim at best.

I think the rule say once per attack you may reflect/parry as an incidental so if each person does it once i think it checks out

lol this was meant to be kinda of joke since mechanically it works, but realistically sorta kinda not really

Also my bad if i said soak they get 20 dmg reduction because wen they're all engaged with each other they cab use circle of shelter on each other with 3 ranks on reflect and parry and each person using it that basically 5 x 4 so 20 for each person

Fair enough. The "everyone Body Guards the guy to the right" would prolly look really silly in practice. I do get what you're going for though.

As for Reflect, I wouldn't allow more then 1 character's Reflect to be applied to each attack. I don't think anything official has ever been discussed, probably because it's never really come up. I definitely wouldn't allow a multiple Reflects against a single attack roll though. It might just be me, and I'm fine if that's the case. Though I see the odds of this ever occurring to be pretty slim at best.

I think the rule say once per attack you may reflect/parry as an incidental so if each person does it once i think it checks out

They likely didn't clarify because A) word count always kills a lot of less used ambiguous rules, and B) the odds of two separate characters both having taken Protector is small enough not to be immediately concerned with it, and C) it might not have crossed anyone's mind and didn't come up during playtesting because of example B.

Regardless, the chances are extremely small it will ever need my making a ruling in my group. If it does, then my answer is 1 Reflect per attack.

Dark Vader will still kill them. Bind the entire party and look at them helpless being gunned by his stormtrooper minions while slowly chocking the air out of their lungs.

Dark Vader will still kill them. Bind the entire party and look at them helpless being gunned by his stormtrooper minions while slowly chocking the air out of their lungs.

you can still attack while bound stupidly enough

saber throw for the win

The way you beat the "Jedi -Turtle" defense is with gas bombs, and fire. Job done!

Dark Vader will still kill them. Bind the entire party and look at them helpless being gunned by his stormtrooper minions while slowly chocking the air out of their lungs.

you can still attack while bound stupidly enough

saber throw for the win

Depends on the mastery of the Bind user. A more skilled user may force them to take significant strain for every action, may impose setback dice, or may prevent them from taking actions altogether.

I think the fun way to challenge this group would be with a pair of inquisitors, one of whom specializes in force powers, and the other being a melee specialist with a double lightsaber. Throw them on their heels and see whether they improvise a way to win or beat a hasty retreat.

Drop a thought bomb... GM's job done,

next session: sits down with the players and says: Do you want to play Star Wars or Mega-mini/maxathon-PCoptimisation RPG?

Drop a thought bomb... GM's job done,

next session: sits down with the players and says: Do you want to play Star Wars or Mega-mini/maxathon-PCoptimisation RPG?

Playing the force unleashed and creating a party of abominations for the specific purpose of breaking the rules are two different things.

This is really not a big deal. The GM has total control over the universe. So what if the players devise some way to make themselves nigh-invulnerable on one front?

Even if the hypothetical situation that the OP suggests ever came into being, you'd have a group of stunted characters. So, hit 'em in the dump stats, and that's your job done. They are built to withstand some heavy personal scale damage. If that's what they want, let them have it and make sure to rule the situation responsibly. Let them withstand hoards of stormtroopers. Let them feel totally awesome.

Then, throw them into a social encounter, and watch their carefully constructed combat terrors flub Charm roll, after Negotiation roll, after Deception roll.

And anyway, they only have so much strain. Reflect & Parry cost something. So even this vaunted group of defensive masters cannot withstand the full might of the Empire.

Playing the force unleashed and creating a party of abominations for the specific purpose of breaking the rules are two different things.

Not everyone will agree with you on that.

Any planetary scale weapon will still devastate them, especially one with Blast since they're going to be packed rather tightly together

If that planetary scale weapon does 35+ dmg then yes their 20 dmg reduction wont do much against that, but if they miss with an energy based weapon...

"sir we just fired our big ass laser at the group of rebels are you sure that was the best coarse of action?"

"Of course if anything it was a merciful and swift death"

"Um sir that big ass laser we just fired is coming back right at us"

"..."

PS the more you have with this build the better

If it's a planetary sized weapon like the Death Star it wouldn't be 35+ damage to characters. It would be 100 times that, so the damage is 3500 and no matter what the group would be vaporized. Now that 20 points reflected back to say the Death Star would be 100 times less damaging due to difference in weapon scale. It ultimately becomes .02 damage and the Death Star shrugs it off.

Using capital ship weapons it would be times 10 instead of 100, so the Jedi characters take 350 points of damage. They reflect a whopping 2 points of damage that is easily absorbed by the ship. Isn't weapon scale fun?

There are only two weapon damage scales... Personal and Vehicle/Planetary.

no x100.

(I really wish they had gone with a separate vehicle vs ship scale, with more granularity... but they didn't.)

Interesting combo. Given the focus towards one type of damage it works well against that one type. The balancing factor is that there are three resources in the system.

I am surprised no one mentioned Scathing Tirade...where words are weapons.

"I can't believe what I'm seeing here! Phenomenal Force-driven powers and you spend it all trying to make a phalanx work when there are autofiring energy weapons, giant walking tanks, air power, and orbital bombardment?! Just grab some cover and use a blasted blaster!"

I am surprised no one mentioned Scathing Tirade...where words are weapons.

One politico with Scathing Tirade and both upgrades (meaning three tirades a turn for a couple of strain), plus upgrades to the Unmatched Expertise (lowering the difficulty of all rolls) and a solid Coercion skill of four yellows can unleash hell upon these Jedi without ever raising a blaster to them.

There's also Force powers. A couple Move upgrades and you can move them all to long range of each other

"Defensive Circle this!"

The build is strong against blasters, but very easy to counter.

Even a few simple frag grenades can hurt. Just throw them in, and the soak will be the only layer of protection. The base damage hurts the original target, the blast damage hurts the rest (subject to 2 advantages). You can reflect a blaster with a lightsaber, but not a grenade.

I am surprised no one mentioned Scathing Tirade...where words are weapons.

One politico with Scathing Tirade and both upgrades (meaning three tirades a turn for a couple of strain), plus upgrades to the Unmatched Expertise (lowering the difficulty of all rolls) and a solid Coercion skill of four yellows can unleash hell upon these Jedi without ever raising a blaster to them.

I can see these four Jedi curled up into the fetal position just crying themselves to sleep.