Anyone have ideas for converting the Lightsaber cadences from Fragments from the Rim over to F&D? Donovan, I remember your D20 conversion of them. Have you tried taking a crack at it for F&D, or would you be interested in trying?

What are you looking to accomplish?

Personally, I'd be reluctant to try to make the cadences into Talents. I suppose you could use the Force power format to simulate greater investment of time (and XP) providing greater rewards, but given how nasty lightsabers already are in combat I'd be reluctant to beef them up too much.

It would be easy enough to replicate the cadences with narrative and an increasingly-difficult combat check, with success providing a Boost die for the student (to Lightsaber checks certainly, perhaps to others as well?). I could see scaling the rewards to each cadence, but perhaps having them last longer would be more balanced. I.e. the First Cadence provides a Boost die to your next Lightsaber check, whereas completing the Fourth Cadence might provide that Boost die for the next 24 hours, and so on.

3 minutes ago, SFC Snuffy said:

What are you looking to accomplish?

Personally, I'd be reluctant to try to make the cadences into Talents. I suppose you could use the Force power format to simulate greater investment of time (and XP) providing greater rewards, but given how nasty lightsabers already are in combat I'd be reluctant to beef them up too much.

It would be easy enough to replicate the cadences with narrative and an increasingly-difficult combat check, with success providing a Boost die for the student (to Lightsaber checks certainly, perhaps to others as well?). I could see scaling the rewards to each cadence, but perhaps having them last longer would be more balanced. I.e. the First Cadence provides a Boost die to your next Lightsaber check, whereas completing the Fourth Cadence might provide that Boost die for the next 24 hours, and so on.

The cadences weren't talents. They were tests . There were five cadences, using sets of wax cylinders and bal bearing s(or simply candles for a more aesthetic form). They were Katas that Jedi performed that with specific difficulties involved to accomplish them, each cadence more difficult than the last. Read the link I posted. It gives a pretty good break down. The oriignal Cadences were found in Fragments from the Rim by WEG.

Yes, I know what they are supposed to be. I'm asking " what do you want to accomplish? "

The d20 version of Vo'ren's Cadences had the same setup of cylinders and bearings but successfully completing the "test" provided a PC with a bonus. Is that what you're trying replicate? If there is no tangible in-game benefit, then there are no mechanics required and thus nothing to "convert."

I guess I'm confused about where you're going with this.

I would use it as a reason to award xp. Each perfectly executed cadence gives enough xp to increase lightsaber by 1 rank. So when doing all 4 you get to lightsaber 5. I'd put a limit of 1 cadence each time you try while you rp some training in between adventures. Or maybe you can use the xp to buy a different lightsaber spec.

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I'm with SFC Snuffy here, I'm not sure what the point is. I dislike Lareg's idea since it's basically giving XP (and a lot of it) for a series of dice rolls rather than story telling and RP.

It's for the same purposes the other training encounters in Nexus of Power and Disciples of Harmony are.

I guess I'm just not seeing the encounter. As far as I can tell these cadences are one specific action or short sequence of actions. There's no story or anything happening, you either complete the cadence or you don't.

34 minutes ago, biggreen10 said:

I guess I'm just not seeing the encounter. As far as I can tell these cadences are one specific action or short sequence of actions. There's no story or anything happening, you either complete the cadence or you don't.

That's also true if you're running the Jedi Trials from Nexus of Power and Disciples of Harmony . They're each relatively short "modular encounters". The thing about each cadence, is that the different cadences get progressively harder, requiring more and more candles, with less time between the set-up and strikes for each candle, and are designed to test each "level" of a Jedi's training: 1st cadence is for beginners, 2nd is for more seasoned apprentices, 3rd is for freshly knighted Jedi, 4th for experienced Jedi Knights, 5th for Masters. And each is progressively longer, with the first taking one hour, the second taking two hours, and the last three taking three hours each.

8 hours ago, Lareg said:

I would use it as a reason to award xp. Each perfectly executed cadence gives enough xp to increase lightsaber by 1 rank. So when doing all 4 you get to lightsaber 5. I'd put a limit of 1 cadence each time you try while you rp some training in between adventures. Or maybe you can use the xp to buy a different lightsaber spec.

Well, according to FftR, once you've successfully completed an individual cadence in every possible combination (left-handed, right-handed, one-handed, two-handed, blind folded, alternating, random order, etc.), you'll always be able to complete that cadence, unless certain specific conditions change (such as having more DSPs, which was a huge deal under the D6 system). So yes, earning XP would be an award, though certainly not necessarily enough to automatically raise your rank. Besides, that's not what I'm concerned about. I want the actual mechanics of the individual cadences themselves. What should the difficulties be? What should the D6 Control and Sense Force skills be replaced with? How many rolls/roll combinations should I require? Those are my questions. How should they actually play out within the game mechanics?

The test is just to hit things? Sounds like combat checks.

15 minutes ago, killerbeardhawk said:

The test is just to hit things? Sounds like combat checks.

If you've ever read the D6 supplement, Fragments from the Rim . They're far more than that. Not only do you have to strike a very small target without damaging the candles in the slightest, you first have to set up each candle and ball bearing with pinpoint precision and in a very small amount of time (less than a second), and the amount of time you have for each placement and strike decreases significantly with each cadence. They're a test of not only the use of the lightsaber, but also the Force. So, while, yes, a Lightsaber check would definitely be required, (though not necessarily at the base difficulty), there were also other rolls required as part of the checks in the original D6 cadences. Each cadence required multiple rolls utilizing multiple skills, including Force skills .

Sounds easy, make them use their force powers too. Maybe a discipline check or two.

I would figure out in which order they should make these checks then test it.

My question would be, how would someone roleplay this, if you just made some roll a bunch of checks until they fail, there's not much to day about it.

How did you complete it in D6? Roll a bunch of checks to see if it was possible?

4 minutes ago, killerbeardhawk said:

Sounds easy, make them use their force powers too. Maybe a discipline check or two.

I would figure out in which order they should make these checks then test it.

My question would be, how would someone roleplay this, if you just made some roll a bunch of checks until they fail, there's not much to day about it.

How did you complete it in D6? Roll a bunch of checks to see if it was possible?

To go into detail about it would require quoting that entire section of the book, and it's at home right now.

On 7/10/2017 at 4:01 PM, Tramp Graphics said:

Anyone have ideas for converting the Lightsaber cadences from Fragments from the Rim over to F&D? Donovan, I remember your D20 conversion of them. Have you tried taking a crack at it for F&D, or would you be interested in trying?

I am using them as Light saber training exercises that a master can give an apprentice. It is narrative fluff, but I have them make light saber skills and reduce the cost of increasing the skill by five if they follow them properly.

Your mileage may vary, of course, but spending an evening making roll after roll after roll of Lightsaber and Force power checks sounds incredibly boring to me. There are other systems for that. I'd much rather condense it into a one-roll resolution format, narrate the situation, give the player a challenging Lightsaber combat check, and hand them a modest temporary bonus if they make it.

This is definitely one of the bits of minutiae that you can get too far into the weeds with.

This does seem like it would be best handled by treating it as a version of the lightsaber training exercise in Disciples of Harmony, albeit probably against a fixed difficulty/setbacks rather than the opposed Lightsaber vs Ranged-Light used for blaster deflection. Just a single roll in both cases.

At most, use the Training Exercises section of Disciples of Harmony as a rough guideline.

But for the most part, it'd really just be a narrative thing of the PC justifying an increase in their Lightsaber skill, with no extra mechanical benefit.

So this was something I waffled over trying to squeeze into the mentor encounters in Disciples of Harmony, the mentor encounters section (starting on page 76). Ultimately, anything I set up felt too mechanically similar to the blaster deflection exercise and/or the meditation exercise, and that was a far more iconic training moments from the films vs something from a more obscure D6 sourcebook. However, you can easily use the format for the mentor encounters to create your own for the various cadences (or velocities as they were called in other sources). I'd suggest using a combination of Lightsaber, Brawl, Coordination, Athletics, Discipline, and Resilience depending on what sort of movements you think are most important.

The mentor encounters CAN grant a small amount of XP, but mostly they exist as a way for the mentor and student to interact, which can potentially affect Conflict scores and other elements of the game.