So was running my weekly campaign.

The group had gotten to the end Boss (Nemesis).(adversary 2)

The Jedi guardian went first.(lightsaber 2,brawn 3)

Final result (2s,3a,1f,1t)

so he did 12 damage and a massive crit (roll +30 from crits, +20 from vicious)

rolled:92 on D100

dead Nemesis

rest of the party pissed off for the lackluster ending to the night

has anyone run into the problem of lightsaber quick kills before and is there anyway to remedy the situation.

I haven't run into it,personally (no jedi or force sensitives in my game) but I've heard the story many times. If you're going to allow lightsabers, odds are you're going to have this problem. Then it escalates: you make foes capable of surviving lightsabers but now they're really tough. And so the pendulum swings. I think the solution to this might be to make obstacles that a lightsaber can't cut through in one round...or at all. If fighting is the climax of the adventure, make sure there's enough foes for everyone to face. I reminded of that scene where Darth Maul shows up in Ep. I and the jedis tell the others that they got this, and the others go off and battle their way up the palace.

First I don't strucrure 'end boss fights' like a MMO. A true mastermind isn't going to fight alone or at all. Second, I will set up fights to challenge the group. So if the point of their spear is someone with a lightsaber you can bet there will be Bolas, Glop grenades, concussion grenades, and jetpacks showing up to confound a melee centric character. If you let a PC with any nut crusher weapon just take a shot at your main villain, death is a possibility particularly if you don't set your opposition up with survival and escape in mind.

Just curious, but wouldn't this have still been an issue with a vibro-axe or similar weapon and lucky rolling? A vibro-axe gets Vicious 3, so is even more deadly in that situation right? Or am I missing something else, not really looked at lightsabers all that much so dunno what else they get.

A vibro-axe in capable hands, a weapon with Autofire and a rank or two of True Aim, any combat focused character can one shot a single enemy with some degree of regularity and it's equally easy to reach that point with any of the combat skills and from the look of the results, the character is using a fully modded Ilum crystal. As cool as climactic final battles with a lone enemy are, they need more meat shields in this system.

Breach 1 is what makes the lightsaber so deadly IMO. Getting a Soak above 10 is tough to do, even for a Nemesis.

Just curious, but wouldn't this have still been an issue with a vibro-axe or similar weapon and lucky rolling? A vibro-axe gets Vicious 3, so is even more deadly in that situation right? Or am I missing something else, not really looked at lightsabers all that much so dunno what else they get.

For starters, while a vibro-sword or -axe might have Pierce 1 or 2, lightsabers tend to have Breach, which means that instead of ignoring a couple points of soak, they ignore it all.

*ninja'd

The biggest thing with lightsabers is that they ignore the first 10 points of soak [breach 1]. You can mitigate that with ranks of parry and adversary. Also, if you have a saber bunny some of your bad guys should use range or area effect weapons. My group all have sabers and they are lethal. Mind you my group have also seen a new report recently about how imperials have locked down the last world they went to due to reports of 4 people with lightsabers.

Also, isn't the crit what killed him here? 142 is "Dies on the end of next round" isn't it? So he could have had all the soak in the world, but if even only a point got through the enemy would have been dead.

Breach 1 is what makes the lightsaber so deadly IMO. Getting a Soak above 10 is tough to do, even for a Nemesis.

Just curious, but wouldn't this have still been an issue with a vibro-axe or similar weapon and lucky rolling? A vibro-axe gets Vicious 3, so is even more deadly in that situation right? Or am I missing something else, not really looked at lightsabers all that much so dunno what else they get.

For starters, while a vibro-sword or -axe might have Pierce 1 or 2, lightsabers tend to have Breach, which means that instead of ignoring a couple points of soak, they ignore it all.

*ninja'd

Thanks, as far as I can tell it was the crit that caused the insta-kill in this particular instance but yeah, am so very very glad that I didn't let one of my players blag herself a lightsaber, and future requests are probably gonna be responded with "nooooope!"

This doesnt apply directly but lightsabers are as rare as jedi in our game. My one force sensitive character would love to get his hands on one but we are talking Quest material there. They were all rounded up and destroyed with order 66 and have become as legendary as those that used them. Seeing someone with a lightsaber would be a truly "WOW" moment in our universe. (Followed quickly by the EEEWW moment when an Inquisitor led battalion of troopers go after them)

This invariably occurs when you let the PCs play with high-end, tricked-out weapons right out of the box. It's like letting D&D paladins start with Holy Avengers.

The videogame-style, 'one villain vs PC party' doesn't work in this game. For laughs, we did a non-canon-in-our-game fight between the AOR party (no lightsabers) and a Vader expy with 5 in all skills, 6 in all stats, most of the F&D specs and most of the Force powers. He didn't get to the end of round two.

As 2P51 says, villains need meat-shields, escape routes, etc, if you want them to survive against your PCs.

What was the fight like? Just the PCs meeting the bad guy in a open room?

Of course he was going to die, he was outnumbered, out gunned and had nothing to fall back on.

Think about the big duels in the movies, they're often done with the bad guy isolating one person while the rest do other things, fight stormtroopers/droids/etc.

And they used their environment, like in Empire, Vader runs and hides to come back and strike when Luke isn't excepting, he throws stuff at him, corners him, etc. He doesn't just fight him head on and it's not all constant lightsaber clashes.

If you're bad guy is a smart Sith/Dark Jedi type then he'll use similar tactics.

And if you want a more epic and long formed type of duels, then you can maybe use these fan-made rules for dueling https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/190430-dueling-rules/

But if he's not a Sith, or a bounty hunter or other combat guy, and he's just a crime lord or an Imperial officer, then, well, maybe a short "slice him once he's dead" is appropriate. Think of Jabba, how hard was it for Leia to kill him? Not very, but getting into the position of being able to attack him was the challenge. That's where the main bulk of trying to defeat him came from, getting through all of Jabba's traps and minions.

So when making the next BBEG, think of what kind of bad guy they are; do they get their hands dirty? Would, realistically, them getting into a fight get them killed? Think of how they would approach that and if their entire strategy is not letting the PCs get near them to be able to kill them, because they know they'd die in that fight.

Setting aside their rarity/illegality, lightsabers are extremely expensive. I hope they walked through hellfire and brimstone to get theirs, or at least started off at Knight level. If so, then maybe they deserved to kill the Boss so quickly. If not, they probably had no business owning them in the first place.

Mind you, this system is very "swingy" -- wild, unpredictable results are part and parcel of the experience. I'd propose a unique outcome to this scenario, in order to accommodate for this: the person who kills him becomes famous.

Have you ever seen the Star Trek: DS9 episode "The Homecoming"? In it, a Bajoran resistance fighter named Li Nalas ascends to mythic status for his supposedly heroic killing of a loathed Cardassian warlord. But...it's a little more complicated than that.

Li was part of a minor resistance cell. While the group was in hiding in the mountains, they were without food and power cells for their weapons and were forced down into the valley. Li was sent ahead to scout where he encountered Gul Zarale. When the other members of Li's group found the pair moments later; they believed that Li had killed the Cardassian officer in an intense duel, however the story wasn't quite true. In the actual event, he stumbled upon Zarale in his underwear, bathing in a river. The Cardassian was stunned and didn't react immediately and only when Zarale reached for his rifle, Li realized he still had his own phaser and fired at the Cardassian, killing him. Li didn't want to be a hero for doing such a thing but when he was discovered standing over the body and even after he tried to explain what had happened; no one believed him. Indeed, as Li and his follow resistance fighters traveled around, word of Li's exploits spread and grew to mythic proportions.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Li_Nalas

The repercussions on Li Nalas's life are profound: this accident turns him into a hero beyond all measure, and he cannot handle the fame. You might consider a similar story hook here: how the PC in question slew 20 soldiers in order to get to the Boss; about how they battled for hours; etc. But in reality, the dust in the room caused a fault in his [XXX] to fail and, with his defences down, the lightsaber cleaved him in half.

Sorry if you got the wrong idea it was not designed like an MMO end boss it just happened to end up that way due to how the PCs handled the lead up.

And the players where not newbies they have around 600+ xp and the lightsaber was an end arc item.

People make such a big deal out of the breach 1, but the reality is. It's not that powerful in personal combat.

For example, you have an attacker with a brawn of 4 attacking with equal skill but two different weapons:.

1) You go up against a badguy with a soak of 5 using a lightsaber and score 3 successes. So damage of 9, straight through.

2) Same guy with a vibro axe. It has pierce 2, so only goes up against a soak of 3. Base Damage of 7, plus the same 3 successes. You have 10, minus 3 soak. 7. Damage. I don't think the difference of a 7 vs a 9 is all that big a deal. You then factor in the vicious on the axe and suddenly your chance of a lethal crit are much higher then the lightsaber. God forbid they add some mods to make the axe even more vicious.

Combat in this game has the potential to knock people down fast, especially with any of the higher damage weapons.

If you're going to deny your Jedi a saber, you might as well deny your marauder a vibro axe, your heavy any sort of big gun, and absolutely don't give your demolitionist any sort of explosive. It will all have the same effect.

Denying your Jedi a lightsaber, when there are 6 tree's that revolve around using them (more if you count armorer) is doing them a disservice. A little bit of forethought in your boss encounters can make them longer and more intersting. A few extra minions that block the first few shots works pretty well (use the rules from I can't remember which supplement). I'd also recommend giving your bossman a few ranks of durable. It will keep them from getting a lethal crit right out of the gate, without overly negatively impacting the damage potential of the rest of the party. There are things you can do to make the fight more interesting and balanced without gimping party members out of their signature abilities.

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2P51 pretty much hit the nail on the head.

Most RPGs have a big problem when it's a group of PCs dog-piling on a single NPC enemy, and various solutions have been tried with varying degrees of success. Heck, I've seen full-blown Inquisitors in this system get steam-rolled by groups of Knight-Level PCs with only the Inquisitor having a lightsaber.

About the only time the BBEG should be fighting by themselves is when they've only got one (maybe two) PCs to deal with. Consider the films. Maul in TPM got cocky in dealing with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, but very quickly shifted his tactics to keep the fight one-on-one as much as he could. Dooku had similar arrogance in RotS, but quickly learned that Obi-Wan and Anakin had become far more capable in the time span between AotC and RotS. Vader generally only engaged his foes one-on-one, with his appearance in Siege of Lothal being an exception due to how dramatically he outclassed both Kanan and Ezra. The Grand Inquisitor from the same series also generally went for one-on-one fights so as to maintain the advantage.

People make such a big deal out of the breach 1, but the reality is. It's not that powerful in personal combat.

For example, you have an attacker with a brawn of 4 attacking with equal skill but two different weapons:.

1) You go up against a badguy with a soak of 5 using a lightsaber and score 3 successes. So damage of 9, straight through.

2) Same guy with a vibro axe. It has pierce 2, so only goes up against a soak of 3. Base Damage of 7, plus the same 3 successes. You have 10, minus 3 soak. 7. Damage. I don't think the difference of a 7 vs a 9 is all that big a deal. You then factor in the vicious on the axe and suddenly your chance of a lethal crit are much higher then the lightsaber. God forbid they add some mods to make the axe even more vicious.

I can't agree with this, yes a Vibro-Ax wielder can do as much or almost as much as a Lightsaber but that doesn't take into account the low critical rating. Especially if you use the GM screen creation rules which allows a character to start with a Lightsaber with a critical rating of 1.

Also that is two points of damage per blow, if you have more than one sabermonkey that stacks up. Lastly using Force and Destiny Lightsaber Specialisation trees give you the option to use other attributes so can rock in a number of areas since you could have Intelligence as your Attribute and have uber knowledge's etc.

If you're going to deny your Jedi a saber, you might as well deny your marauder a vibro axe, your heavy any sort of big gun, and absolutely don't give your demolitionist any sort of explosive. It will all have the same effect.

Denying your Jedi a lightsaber, when there are 6 tree's that revolve around using them (more if you count armorer) is doing them a disservice. A little bit of forethought in your boss encounters can make them longer and more intersting. A few extra minions that block the first few shots works pretty well (use the rules from I can't remember which supplement). I'd also recommend giving your bossman a few ranks of durable. It will keep them from getting a lethal crit right out of the gate, without overly negatively impacting the damage potential of the rest of the party. There are things you can do to make the fight more interesting and balanced without gimping party members out of their signature abilities.

A Jedi is far more than just a glowing lock pick wielder, there is a whole array of Force abilities which are far more relevant. I have personally played a Force User whose only weapons were a holdout Blaster and later I managed to loot a Blaster pistol. In another game i had a character who was a Jedi who rarely did anything Force or Lightsaber related, he mainly used his Negotiation and other skills.

Also don't forget the squad rules. Put your Nemesis as a squad leader. Then hits like that are stopped by a minion who sacrifices themselves to save their leader...

People make such a big deal out of the breach 1, but the reality is. It's not that powerful in personal combat.

For example, you have an attacker with a brawn of 4 attacking with equal skill but two different weapons:.

1) You go up against a badguy with a soak of 5 using a lightsaber and score 3 successes. So damage of 9, straight through.

2) Same guy with a vibro axe. It has pierce 2, so only goes up against a soak of 3. Base Damage of 7, plus the same 3 successes. You have 10, minus 3 soak. 7. Damage. I don't think the difference of a 7 vs a 9 is all that big a deal. You then factor in the vicious on the axe and suddenly your chance of a lethal crit are much higher then the lightsaber. God forbid they add some mods to make the axe even more vicious.

I can't agree with this, yes a Vibro-Ax wielder can do as much or almost as much as a Lightsaber but that doesn't take into account the low critical rating. Especially if you use the GM screen creation rules which allows a character to start with a Lightsaber with a critical rating of 1.

Also that is two points of damage per blow, if you have more than one sabermonkey that stacks up. Lastly using Force and Destiny Lightsaber Specialisation trees give you the option to use other attributes so can rock in a number of areas since you could have Intelligence as your Attribute and have uber knowledge's etc.

If you're going to deny your Jedi a saber, you might as well deny your marauder a vibro axe, your heavy any sort of big gun, and absolutely don't give your demolitionist any sort of explosive. It will all have the same effect.

Denying your Jedi a lightsaber, when there are 6 tree's that revolve around using them (more if you count armorer) is doing them a disservice. A little bit of forethought in your boss encounters can make them longer and more intersting. A few extra minions that block the first few shots works pretty well (use the rules from I can't remember which supplement). I'd also recommend giving your bossman a few ranks of durable. It will keep them from getting a lethal crit right out of the gate, without overly negatively impacting the damage potential of the rest of the party. There are things you can do to make the fight more interesting and balanced without gimping party members out of their signature abilities.

A Jedi is far more than just a glowing lock pick wielder, there is a whole array of Force abilities which are far more relevant. I have personally played a Force User whose only weapons were a holdout Blaster and later I managed to loot a Blaster pistol. In another game i had a character who was a Jedi who rarely did anything Force or Lightsaber related, he mainly used his Negotiation and other skills.

Using crit rating as an excuse isn't a viable rationale. It is so easy to get a Vibro Axe to crit 1. In our last campaign our Marauder was so much more deadly then our two Jedi, it wasn't even a comparison.

I'll take the marauder or a Heavy with a Repeating blaster for pure killing power.

A Jedi is far more than just a glowing lock pick wielder, there is a whole array of Force abilities which are far more relevant. I have personally played a Force User whose only weapons were a holdout Blaster and later I managed to loot a Blaster pistol. In another game i had a character who was a Jedi who rarely did anything Force or Lightsaber related, he mainly used his Negotiation and other skills.

That's nice. . . if you pick a non-lightsaber Jedi tree. If your primary spec is a duelist of some sort? Yeah, your mission statement is pretty much Kill Bad People With Your Laser Sword.

with a lightsaber its the comb of vicious and breach that makes it nasty.

you are right, you can get crit 1 on just about any melee weapon with the right adds.

but that breach is what takes it over the top in my opinion.

Lightsabers should be nasty... look at how many limbs they remove in the movies. A GM just needs to plan accordingly. Use squad rules. Use minions. don't try and run a single nemesis.

Also a bad guy should react to a lightsaber the way one would react to something that deadly. Not stick around. Hondo Inaka is a good example. he does not challenge a jedi on his own. When he encounters on he talks his way out or runs away.