7 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.

Good going, you've undermined all the jedi parry talents in one fell swoop.

But why stop there? Why doesn't my super duper martial artist J'kie C'han have a Brawl Parry skill? He's nimble as hell, so he should totally have it too.

What about my Master of the Staff? Why doesn't he get a Melee Parry skill?

My Gunslinger? He's also very good at avoiding getting hit in a gunfight. He needs Blaster Dodge also!

No thanks. This way lies madness.

2 hours ago, Yaccarus said:

The focus is more on accurate simulation as opposed to what makes for fun gameplay.

Why in heavens name are you taking a game engine that trades in the abstract and try and force it to be a war game simulator?

11 hours ago, Yaccarus said:

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.

But skilled Jedi will have more ranks in reflect / parry than padawan has anyway. IMO one potential problem with your system is that is escalates. Higher rank means both more deflects and higher change of success on each one.

I'm doing my best to take an neutral attitude towards your custom rules. Personally I don't want that level of simulation, but if it works for you, great.

9 hours ago, Desslok said:

Why in heavens name are you taking a game engine that trades in the abstract and try and force it to be a war game simulator?

Because he wants a war game simulator?

I've been musing this and is to me this appears to be a matter of player (& GM) expectations. I'd like head this up by stating it's your game and absolutely you should do whatever you and your players care to do that leads to a fun game. I'm just thinking out loud

However, in my experience this sort of complaint crops up when a player wants to control the narrative. It's similar to when a GM oversteps the line and begins narrating player character actions or reactions.

In most games, the player is in control of their player character choices and as a player they can choose how to develop their player character (new skills, ability points and so on) which affects but does not control how successful they are at any given action.

The player may therefore choose to engage in combat, may choose to deploy a certain skill but is not in control of how successful they are. They affected their odd for success through character development and likely through contextual choices but ultimately, the outcome is out of their hands. Likewise, they can choose how they react to an attack but they cannot control their opponent - they cannot control their opponents skill, ability or luck.

Where SWRPG is interesting is that with the narrative dice system the player does have an element of control over interpretation of results. If the stormtrooper makes a successful attack then the player can collaborate with the GM to interpret results. Perhaps the stormtrooper got a glancing blow or perhaps they hit a powerblock by the player character's head. I'd say players should perhaps be a little humble about their character in general - it opens up a world of interesting interpretations. However I think there's probably a way of interpreting most results in a way that still makes them look awesome.

Remember that wounds are only superficial damage - almost akin to player character fatigue. They can be depleted in a manner of ways narratively. Critical hits are typically where a player is going to be physically injured and may not be able to avoid getting narrtively hit.

Hope this helps in some way?!

On ‎22‎/‎07‎/‎2017 at 4:48 AM, _Thriven_ said:

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 ****?

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.

There are a couple of issues:

• Star Wars is very much a game system designed to allow a player to 'have a chance'. Anyone can jump into a fighter cockpit and fly - not necessarily well, but they can fly. Hence, fixed difficulties to allow you to have a chance to pull off a hit against darth scaryface at the climax of the mission. The downside of this mechanic is that generic scrub #3,234 has a chance to hit you, too.
• Skills are very much not the be-all and end-all. You tend to find that your ability to hit someone is largely dependent on your skills, but your ability to avoid being hit is dependent on talents (which is where stuff like Parry, Defensive Driving, Adversary and so on reside). Parry is a talent from Force & Destiny sourcebooks, but is not force-user-specific (it might have popped up in an Edge of the Empire adventure or sourcebook somewhere since for a swordsman or brawler, but I don't recall seeing it) and is a brutal talent for a nemesis (or player) with a decent strain threshold, essentially sucking off huge amounts of damage with little or no regard for pierce/breach traits which normally bypass such things.
• You can do some things to help yourself with tactics, too. Guarded Stance is a manoeuvre which adds a setback die to anyone attacking you. Granted, it adds one to you, too, but adding a black die to generic scrub #3,234's three green vs 2 purple roll matters, whilst throwing a black die against your tidal wave of yellow proficiency dice is not going to materially affect the outcome. If you didn't use it, then clearly you stepped in, killed the first guy, but left yourself open to the second.....poor swordsmanship when facing multiple foes.
• You also need to bear in mind threat/advantage. You just lumped 5 proficiency dice plus maybe one or two boost dice (if you aimed) into unlucky generic scrub #3,233, who has now undergone what we shall refer to as "spontaneous existence failure", having suffered an average of about 14 essentially un-soak-able damage from your humming glow-bat of extremity removal. But that roll should also net an average of 3 or four uncancelled advantage, and there's a fair chance (about 1 in 3) of a triumph being one of them, meaning your General Grievous-esque saber-twirling should reliably be able to trigger advantage effects like:

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Add [Setback] to melee or ranged attacks targeting you until the end of your next turn.

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Perform an immediate free maneuver. Do not exceed the two maneuver per turn limit.

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Turn the tide of battle by doing something such as shooting the controls to the nearby blast doors to seal them shut*.

* In this case, as an example: saber through the floor and leave a cloud of sparks and molten metal fountaining up for a few seconds so generic scrub #3,234 can't reach you this turn, giving you time to turn around and neatly bisect him on your next round.