So imagine I'm the greatest light saber wielding force sensitive exile in the galaxy. 5 brawn and 5 in lightsaber, I roll 5 proficiency die when I attack.

I encounter a single minion who some how during a large fight gets in melee range and he goes to attack me. I had just finished another minion on my last initiative spot and this guy maneuvers into engaged ranged and swings at me. He rolls 2 difficulty. He doesn't know I'm an amazing light saber wielding dude even though his ally was cut down. He wins his roll and I'm struck for XX damage.

What the hell?

I'm the GM in my group and there are times when I hit my players where I think ,"this is bull crap!" Someone highly proficient in a melee weapon should never be hit by some one unskilled in a weapon.

I feel like Melee, Brawl, Lightsaber should be combative checks.

Two lightsaber wielding people rarely should hit each other for so much damage and in this system it's a race to deplete anothers go rather than small wins here and there during an encounter.

Am I taking crazy pills?

There's more to being a master at something in this game than having a high skill. You have to have the talents to back it up.

Whoever isn't much of a Lightsaber master imo if they haven't got a buncha ranks of Parry.

Plus my personal opinion about the time someone thinks they are so superior skill wise they can't get hurt in a fight they are well on their way to a quality @$$ beating...

19 minutes ago, _Thriven_ said:

Am I taking crazy pills?

If you're interested in Lightsaberness and don't have a copy of the Force and Destiny core rulebook, yes, yes you are.

This system handles it by making Skill the method for which you hit, and Talent the method for blocking damage through the Parry talent. The Parry talent is not a force talent, so anyone can use it, and it allows a small expenditure of strain in exchange for damage reduction. If you have enough ranks in Parry + Decent Soak you can completely negate damage.

Gotta watch it, this system has a way of making you feel foolish by not thinking of everything. One minute you're saying that a character with FR 1 isn't a powerful force user, the next minute a dude shows up with a million force talents that don't require FR commitment that grant the ability to shoot lasers out of his eyes....

51 minutes ago, _Thriven_ said:

Am I taking crazy pills?

You're not the first person to bring this up, but, in general, it's part of the game design. It's the same for every skill. The game mechanics favour attacking to keep things from getting stagnant. As noted, the Talents are there to help mitigate some of this. Even if you don't have the Force and Destiny book, you'll notice the EotE careers often have Dodge or Side Step talents, and the Sense Force power allows you to commit a die to upgrade the opponent's difficulty. All this starts to add up.

But even without Talents and Force powers, by rolling 5 proficiency dice, the odds of the PC getting Advantages and Triumph are extremely high, and those can be used to add setback or difficulty upgrades to the opponent, reducing their odds of success. So you're not taking crazy pills, you just haven't thought through all the mechanics.

All of the previous plus hit points, er...Wounds. You can take a lot of damage and heal it back pretty quickly, so don't worry to much about a few stray hits. It's much like D&D where the level 10 fighter without armor is not much (if any) harder to hit than the level 1 fighter without armor. In fact, he's relatively easier to hit for anything that's also scaled up with him. Even if you hate to think this game is like D&D, the escalating Wounds of advancing characters along with fairly static Difficulties to-hit make a very strong similarity.

9 hours ago, 2P51 said:

Plus my personal opinion about the time someone thinks they are so superior skill wise they can't get hurt in a fight they are well on their way to a quality @$$ beating...

Especially if we're talking about fights outside of fiction.

On topic: Yeah, the game is designed, in the main, so that offense is handled by Skills and defense is handled by Talents.

The thing you are overlooking? That most saber fights wont last more than 4 or 5 rounds . What you are asking for, rolls and counter rolls, will just drag what is a reasonably short and narrative affair into this overly long, needlessly dragged out dice rolling epic that will be boring as hell. That's not how this game is suppose to work.

In addition to the parry talent discussion above, don't sleep on the Sense Force Power, where you can upgrade enemy attacks against you, or the Protect Force Power. There are other talents out there that can have a similar effects. You can also just wear some armor, you already have a good brawn, and ignore a great deal of the melee and brawl attacks! A couple ranks in parry in the event of lightsabers (freaking breach 1), and you should be in good shape at engaged range!

So yes, having 5 skill ranks is impressive, but consider its only an XP investment of 75 XP. Completely mastering combat is going to take more than that, and this game does that by putting most all of the defensive capabilities in talents (and Force Powers). This isn't limited to melee, brawl, and lightsaber combat, it works this way for vehicular and ranged combat as well.

11 hours ago, Ghostofman said:

If you're interested in Lightsaberness and don't have a copy of the Force and Destiny core rulebook, yes, yes you are.

This system handles it by making Skill the method for which you hit, and Talent the method for blocking damage through the Parry talent. The Parry talent is not a force talent, so anyone can use it, and it allows a small expenditure of strain in exchange for damage reduction. If you have enough ranks in Parry + Decent Soak you can completely negate damage.

Gotta watch it, this system has a way of making you feel foolish by not thinking of everything. One minute you're saying that a character with FR 1 isn't a powerful force user, the next minute a dude shows up with a million force talents that don't require FR commitment that grant the ability to shoot lasers out of his eyes....

Yeah, that's kind of what I'm afraid of. I'll let the game get away from me.

1 hour ago, BrickSteelhead said:

On topic: Yeah, the game is designed, in the main, so that offense is handled by Skills and defense is handled by Talents.

That's an concise way to put it to my players so they can focus where they want to spend their xp to make a tank.

2 minutes ago, KRKappel said:

In addition to the parry talent discussion above, don't sleep on the Sense Force Power, where you can upgrade enemy attacks against you, or the Protect Force Power. There are other talents out there that can have a similar effects. You can also just wear some armor, you already have a good brawn, and ignore a great deal of the melee and brawl attacks! A couple ranks in parry in the event of lightsabers (freaking breach 1), and you should be in good shape at engaged range!

I didn't notice that sense force power ability. Wow.

15 hours ago, Blackbird888 said:

There's more to being a master at something in this game than having a high skill. You have to have the talents to back it up.

Furthermore, you can be the most amazing martial artist in the world and yet your are neither immune to lucky hits, nor can you underestimate the power of large groups. You simply can not cover all angles. The talents still provide you with the power of movie heroes, but not just the skill.

12 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Furthermore, you can be the most amazing martial artist in the world and yet your are neither immune to lucky hits, nor can you underestimate the power of large groups.

Bruce Lee, unquestionably the most amazing martial artist in the world, once said that if he had to fight 10 dudes at once like you see in his movies, it would not end well for him. That's pure fiction, and 10 dudes would be able to whup his ***.

49 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Furthermore, you can be the most amazing martial artist in the world and yet your are neither immune to lucky hits, nor can you underestimate the power of large groups. You simply can not cover all angles. The talents still provide you with the power of movie heroes, but not just the skill.

This is a large part of why you generally shouldn't give Vader stats. He only has one talent - the 'I win' talent. Anything else and your party will find a way to kill him.

23 minutes ago, Genuine said:

This is a large part of why you generally shouldn't give Vader stats. He only has one talent - the 'I win' talent. Anything else and your party will find a way to kill him.

Finding a way to kill him might be something players find entertaining, and far be from me to fiat that away from them. I'll never be a fan of "don't stat it so it can't be beaten" whether as GM or player. Of course, I never expect such things to be easy, and I've seen many a PC die horribly when flying too close to the sun.

1 hour ago, HappyDaze said:

Finding a way to kill him might be something players find entertaining, and far be from me to fiat that away from them. I'll never be a fan of "don't stat it so it can't be beaten" whether as GM or player. Of course, I never expect such things to be easy, and I've seen many a PC die horribly when flying too close to the sun.

I still tell sometimes the story how the parties scout, Dúnedain of the north, was willing to sacrifice his life, stand on the bridge of moria, screaming "run you fools" and then slaying the Balrog of Moria with an roll of over 600 on a D100 (exploding dice on 98-100). Having stats is fine, it makes a great story when pure luck overcomes incredible odds.

Furthermore, sometime with stats should be able to kill players who do something incredibly stupid or brave or even just unlucky. Meanwhile a force of pure GM fiat, becomes limit, because the GM should never abuse the power, which adds a lot of restrictions to your force of nature. It simply makes for a less tense story imho, less surprising results and drives the game more the GMs agenda, instead of the players agenda.
If the players decide their their 200xp character is willing to die trying to stale Vader for 1 minute, so that the rest of the group can board that one Rebel transport with the medical supplies can escape, that player and character should at least have a chance, no matter how slim.
And if that 2000xp darkside sith lord and her apprentice decides to enforce the rule of two against Vader, they should most likely still die, but they at least should get a proper fight.

With all that said, I actually would not bother with giving Vader properly stats or generate him like a PC, adjusting talents as needed on the fly for example or just downright creating new ones which create the effects you like to see for a Vader fight is fine. Adversary 7? Sure, why not. "Breaking" intentionally the expectations with handing out signature abilities from different careers? Hell yeah. Allowing talents like The Force is my Ally to be used multiple times per encounter? Sure. As OOT Incidental? Go for it, stop that AT-AT that some PC has thrown on your Sith Lord mid-air and throw it right back at them over an opposed discipline check.
There is nothing wrong with making those stats unfair, unbalanced, even overwhelming. Still even gods might sometimes fall to mortals, because that is a good story.

20 hours ago, Desslok said:

Bruce Lee, unquestionably the most amazing martial artist in the world, once said that if he had to fight 10 dudes at once like you see in his movies, it would not end well for him. That's pure fiction, and 10 dudes would be able to whup his ***.

I wasn't speaking about being outnumbered but rather a single box getting in engaged range.

I kind on relented on my viewpoint in this thread because I'm most likely not going to change the way I play the game but it does bother me at times that melee and ranged checks should be challenge rolls rather than set difficulty.

If it bothers me later, I may flesh out an alternative system and try it.

It's not that opposed checks in combat wouldn't be more accurate in a simulationist approach, it's that it would turn combat into a confusing headache calculating ever shifting dice pools.

The Difficulty to strike a minion group would change as they suffer damage, striking PCs it would all be different based on stat/skill/talents and it could also fluctuate with crits, the results from combat checks can also have an effect on dice pools for both attacker and defender potentially. How do you factor in range? You either don't, or you add yet another layer of complexity. So what you're left with is a situation where every single roll for everyone at the table could end up being different and change every single round. That would be a game management headache. The mechanics aren't meant to be the most accurate simulation, they're meant to impose some baseline order to keep combat from getting bogged down.

There are two layers to the game; skill which dictates how precise your character is within a text book example and talent that dictates a characters adaptability within an evolving set of skills. Skill is being able to practice a vigorous regiment until you are able to cut precisely and swiftly; talent is being able to apply those text book examples into an evolving environment, being able to judge distance, intention and mitigation of incoming attacks. Dodge, defensive training, defensive stance, parry, reflect all embody this style of improving suitability, thus there are other ways of padding out a character then "just being a textbook Jedi who learnt to fight in a temple."

There is one phrase that always stuck with me: if you enter a knife fight expect to be cut. Even if you are incredibly skilled with a blade, "mundane mooks" can get a sly hit in, cut your hand and do small damage even if ultimately the result was never in doubt. Or as your cutting the first down with a lightsaber the second man; clearly desperate charges in to the side and blind sides the PC as he's turning; having ranks in parry is that character noticing the mook and twisting to avoid the worst of that swing. Meanwhile a guy with just 5 skills hasn't refined his senses for that situation and gets sharked; it isn't enough to drop him but clearly the "Best lightsaber duelest in the galaxy" he is not a title he deserves yet. He might have the strokes down to a tee but he doesn't have the adaptive combat experience to be any more then a novice.

If you are using lightsabers then I would expect you to be using force and destiny for the basis of your characters if you ever wanted your character to be more then an initiated thug with a really unusual sharp stick. Within those books there are plenty of ways to mitigate huge damage loss, that there are alternative resources that already exist without reinventing the wheel.

Edit: Also wounds aren't necessarily wounds; wounds reflect physical strain, strain reflects mental strain and stamina. Critical injuries are actual wounds and given each combat round takes place over a period of time between a few seconds to a whole minute, each round reflects a complex set of exchanges.

On 22.7.2017 at 8:42 PM, _Thriven_ said:

I didn't notice that sense force power ability. Wow.

One PC in my group is a force glow stick master (attacks with YYYY), and every time he has been attacked, it's been at least RRR difficulty, because he doesn't want to be hit (has taken all defensive talents and force abilities (we are at 600 XP range)). The amount of whining when once a stormtrooper got a lucky hit to him with blaster was annoying.

But, as said already, skill is attack proficiency, talents and force powers are defensive proficiency. If that annoys you, then change it. Important thing is that you and your group are having fun.

You could easily make melee attacks competitive rolls, where the difficulty of the vibro axe swinging gamorrean attack is the dicepool of the lightsaber skill of the target. Important thing to note: that counts also vice versa, so the glowstick-swinger also has an increased difficulty to hit

On 7/21/2017 at 11:48 PM, _Thriven_ said:

He doesn't know I'm an amazing light saber wielding dude even though his ally was cut down. He wins his roll and I'm struck for XX damage.

What the hell?

Sounds like what Luke must have thought in Return of the Jedi when someone shot his hand. "I'm a Jedi, and this lowly punk shoots my hand!" It happened in the movies, so why wouldn't it happen in game?

I've been actually working on some custom lightsaber rules. (very, very, custom) and that is one of the things that it fixes. Lightsaber users get three skills.

Lightsaber-defense

Lightsaber-attack

Lightsaber-deflect

(might as well add another fun fact, Lightsaber always uses Agility. Since they are so lightweight, using them requires dexterity, not strength.)

Anyway, any melee or lightsaber-attack checks that target the character must roll opposed to lightsaber-defense.

2 hours ago, Yaccarus said:

I've been actually working on some custom lightsaber rules. (very, very, custom) and that is one of the things that it fixes. Lightsaber users get three skills.

Lightsaber-defense

Lightsaber-attack

Lightsaber-deflect

(might as well add another fun fact, Lightsaber always uses Agility. Since they are so lightweight, using them requires dexterity, not strength.)

Anyway, any melee or lightsaber-attack checks that target the character must roll opposed to lightsaber-defense.

All of that completely destroys all of the actual, perfectly functioning rules that exist for lightsabers.

4 hours ago, Yaccarus said:

(might as well add another fun fact, Lightsaber always uses Agility. Since they are so lightweight, using them requires dexterity, not strength.)

Except that they aren't, at least not when ignited. Plenty of references in the media to "it's heavier than I thought" or "the blade feels lighter" - "that's because you're connecting with it". And it doesn't explain how to deal with the blades getting stuck and ending up in a push-pull contest with your opponent. Watch the Rebels episode Trials of the Darksaber, which kind of destroys the "treat it like a rapier" idea. The above quote from Rebels actually makes a better case for Willpower or Presence, rather than one of the physical attributes. Besides, in game terms, if you give it to Agility, then Agility shrouds everything.

4 hours ago, Yaccarus said:

Lightsaber users get three skills.

It could work if the "defense" skill is used as the opposing pool by the attacker, except for the fact that it throws off the scale. If two unequal combatants have at it, by RAW the less skilled combatant still has a chance to do something. They can even be vastly outclassed in terms of raw skill, and still land a hit. However, by your system, even a marginally superior foe will win pretty easily, as they will hit as often but not be hit in return. I expect it would be a lot of work to rescale the encounters appropriately.

How do you use the "deflect" skill? It sounds like more rolling when it's not your turn, something the game tries to avoid.

It's very custom rules, and not meant for everyone. The focus is more on accurate simulation as opposed to what makes for fun gameplay.

Further rules that I can explain:

a. The "push-pull contest" is done after an attack is parried using opposed melee.

b. Also, you do you roll when it's not your turn. To deflect, you have to spend a "prepare for deflect" maneuver on your most recent turn, which allows you to deflect a number of shots equal to ranks in deflect. The check to deflect a shot is easy, but can be increased by advantage from the shooter.

My defense for the deflection system: The maneuver system means that a duelist would be so "busy" deflecting shots that he can't do much else. The incidental check to deflect means that a Jedi can still block a shot, no matter how good the shooter is. The fact that you get deflections equal to a number of ranks in lightsaber-deflect means that skilled Jedi can deflect more shots while a handful of shooters might overwhelm the average padawan.