So here is a question for everybody. I have recently had an inquisitor fight the party. They stole the inquisitors ship and used to to successfully hit the inquisitor with 10 damage ship scale. The inquisitor has the reflect ability that reflects 6 damage for the price of 3 strain. My question is this: first can reflect even be used against a ships ranged combat in the first place? If so does reflect only reflect personal scale damage or can it reflect ship scale damage? Any help would be appreciated even more so If you guys have specific page numbers for the rules on this. Thank you in advance.

Sincerely,

Frustrated GM.

Pfft. Oh boy.

There are now examples in modern canon wherein they do deflect shots from ships.

I personally don't like that for a whole bunch of reasons. But it's down to you.

As my very limited understanding goes. That would parry 6 regular scale damage that would equate to a decimal point 6 of damage against a ship.

17 minutes ago, Luahk said:

Pfft. Oh boy.

There are now examples in modern canon wherein they do deflect shots from ships.

I personally don't like that for a whole bunch of reasons. But it's down to you.

As my very limited understanding goes. That would parry 6 regular scale damage that would equate to a decimal point 6 of damage against a ship.

Which is weird because that means rifles are harder to reflect than turbolasers. But yeah that is my understanding reflect works before the x10 damage multiplier for vehicle weapons.

And yes, in Star Wars canon ship weapons can be reflected, Ezra Bridger does it all the time. Also in canon reflect is much easier than three strain,

14 minutes ago, Eoen said:

Which is weird because that means rifles are harder to reflect than turbolasers. But yeah that is my understanding reflect works before the x10 damage multiplier for vehicle weapons.

And yes, in Star Wars canon ship weapons can be reflected, Ezra Bridger does it all the time. Also in canon reflect is much easier than three strain,

Safe to say I'm not a rebels fan. It's also difficult to draw our inspiration from an animated series. But for me it's as simple as if a plane shoots the earth (fighter jet) it tears open the ground. So wtf is a laser gonna do? The force behind it is simply too much in my mind.

20 hours ago, Luahk said:

Safe to say I'm not a rebels fan. It's also difficult to draw our inspiration from an animated series. But for me it's as simple as if a plane shoots the earth (fighter jet) it tears open the ground. So wtf is a laser gonna do? The force behind it is simply too much in my mind.

I agree with you if your talking about physics, but a lightsaber is a mystical energy weapon held together by the force, its a work of alchemy. The force can reflect the lasers which shouldn't make noise in space anyways.

The problem with reflecting capital weapons is if they hit near you they do blast damage so you really don't want to reflect them that much.

I don't have any problem with the medium of animation, it's an American phenomenon to associate it with kids exclusively. You can tell serious stories in animation just look as Grave of the Firefly's or numerous other examples from Japan.

15 minutes ago, Eoen said:

I agree with you if your talking about physics, but a lightsaber is a mystical energy weapon held together by the force, its a work of alchemy. The force can reflect the lasers which shouldn't make noise in space anyways. The problem with reflecting capital weapons is if they hit near you they do blast damage so you really don't want to reflect them that much.

I don't have any problem with the medium of animation, it's an American phenomenon to associate it with kids exclusively. You can tell serious stories in animation just look as Grave of the Firefly's or numerous other examples from Japan.

I get that with the mysticism and all that.

I don't associate it with kids I just don't think they take it as serious.

It's basically GM's call what weapons are and aren't subject to Reflect, but even if it did work on ship scale damage, it would reduce to 4 ship scale damage which is 40 character scale damage which is still more than enough to wipe out anything human sized unless you're giving them an absurd wound threshold for some reason.

6 hours ago, Eoen said:

Which is weird because that means rifles are harder to reflect than turbolasers. But yeah that is my understanding reflect works before the x10 damage multiplier for vehicle weapons.

And yes, in Star Wars canon ship weapons can be reflected, Ezra Bridger does it all the time. Also in canon reflect is much easier than three strain,

I think it's safe to say that "it's easier than 3 strain" is because they've bought into Reflect very heavily, and thus have the lower strain cost. IIRC, if you buy enough into Reflect, and Improved/Superior, that you can reduce that cost down to 1 strain. Pretty sure Ezra isn't running around with just 1 rank in Reflect pulling off that stuff

36 minutes ago, Fenrir423 said:

It's basically GM's call what weapons are and aren't subject to Reflect, but even if it did work on ship scale damage, it would reduce to 4 ship scale damage which is 40 character scale damage which is still more than enough to wipe out anything human sized unless you're giving them an absurd wound threshold for some reason.

According to the discussions I’ve read on these boards reflect is applied before the x10 multiplier, so for the purposes of reflect its only four damage.

33 minutes ago, KungFuFerret said:

I think it's safe to say that "it's easier than 3 strain" is because they've bought into Reflect very heavily, and thus have the lower strain cost. IIRC, if you buy enough into Reflect, and Improved/Superior, that you can reduce that cost down to 1 strain. Pretty sure Ezra isn't running around with just 1 rank in Reflect pulling off that stuff

Asoka at 14 is reflecting a lot of droid blasters are you saying just out of the temple have superior reflect? She seems to know Ataru and Shien as well. Those padawans sure had a lot of xp? .

I can buy every Jedi Knight who survived Geonosis would have it.

I posted this scenario to the boards and the Devs myself a while back. The 'official' word I got back is that Reflect was intended to be applied AFTER the multiplier, but you can certainly run it at you table that way if you wish.

We have been using it at our table for quite some time where it is applied before.

End result? Our Jedi still runs from vehicular weapons but can cover an escape for a hit....maybe two (low damage or poorly aimed ones).

Thanks for all the info guys. I'll have to talk it out with my players and see what they think is fair so that it can be arbitrated better on my part. But this brings up a new set of questions. in your opinions as GM should the inquisitor have died outright from 40 damage from a turbo laser? if not how would you have calculated the critical hit(s)?

1 hour ago, Eoen said:

Asoka at 14 is reflecting a lot of droid blasters are you saying just out of the temple have superior reflect? She seems to know Ataru and Shien as well. Those padawans sure had a lot of xp? .

I can buy every Jedi Knight who survived Geonosis would have it.

Considering the Padawans at the level where they are being tossed into live combat have been training for years, yes I would say they likely had multiple ranks in Reflect. The "Padawan students" we see in the movies are hardly a starting character level of XP. They are all pretty much at least Knight Level XP, and if you are playing a combat focused PC, who is planning on getting into a lot of combat, and you want to be reflecting shots, of course you would buy into the trees that let you do that. It's not even that hard with that much XP. I know the term "Knight Level Play" implies that the person is a Jedi Knight, but it really isn't the case. That's just a turn of phrase they used, that has unfortunate assumptions tied to it.

So yes, those "out of the temple" padawans, after having shown years of training and dedication, were deemed capable enough to go into war . You think they sent new meat scrubs out to do that stuff? No, only after they had proven they were able to survive sustained blaster fire.

Besides, there is an episode where they show Anakain in a holocron, teaching young Jedi how to effectively deflect multiple blaster shots. I can't remember if it was an episode of Rebels or Clone Wars (I think Rebels). But the people watching the holovid remark about how they were familiar with the training lesson, as it was a commonly taught technique back at the Temple. So yeah, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they had a high proficiency with Reflect, and possibly Parry as well.

Yeah I wish the hadn’t chosen knight as the term for slightly advanced starting characters.

Just now, Eoen said:

Yeah I wish the hadn’t chosen knight as the term for slightly advanced starting characters.

Eh, I'm sort of ambivalent about it. On the one hand, yeah it does lead to a misunderstanding of what the level of competency is for a PC at that point (not a total newb, but still learning). On the other hand, it's a very distinct term to imply a non-starting character, that instantly let's a person know they aren't talking about a fresh scrub PC. This isn't Newbie Level Play, this is Knight Level Play. So it's effective in that regard, if a bit misleading in terminology

57 minutes ago, Darthtator said:

But this brings up a new set of questions. in your opinions as GM should the inquisitor have died outright from 40 damage from a turbo laser? if not how would you have calculated the critical hit(s)?

Damage doesn't kill, crits do. So by the book, that'd be one crit for going over damage threshold. I could see adding a modifier to it, though.

The other thing to keep in mind is that each shot Ahsoka deflects is NOT one combat check, at the cost of three strain. In most scenes, Ahsoka is using Reflect maybe twice a round, depending on how many minion groups of droids are in the encounter, and each use is her protecting herself from an entire volley of shots, maybe as many as a dozen or more over 20 seconds to a minute of time.

An important point that often gets lost in the transition from highly simulationist games like D&D and WoD to this system is that each roll is NOT a single swing of the sword, a single pull off the trigger; it is not a single attack. Each round can stretch all the way across a minutes of time, and each roll is a Combat Check, the sum total result of all your attempts to harm your target during that time, including a flurry of swings and a volley of shots.

When you look at it that way, if Ahsoka with her 2-4 ranks in Reflect is paying ~0.25 strain per blaster bolt reflected it really doesn't seem quite so bad, now does it ?

EDIT: On the subject of vehicle scale weapons, crits, and death, Darzil has it right: crits are what kills, not raw damage. How I work this is as follows: obviously, for exceeding your wound threshold, you take a crit. If your wounds would exceed double your threshold, you stop counting and take another crit, and add to the result the number over (WT x 2) you went. So for example, you have a threshold of 15, and are at 28, and take 10 damage. You are now at 30 wounds, and take another crit with an additional +8. The 10 damage would have taken you to 38, but you can't go over 30, so the excess adds to the crit result.

This works well, especially for vehicle hits. You're almost certainly going to go over your threshold, which gets you a crit, and you may go over double, which will add any excess damage to the result because of the giant explosion that just happened ten feet away. If the vehicle actually activated it's crit rating on you, the result is treated as having a Vicious rating equal to the weapon's base damage against personal scale targets, so you're likely dead.

And for the original question about reflecting vehicle shots with lightsabers: I'm fairly certain that the intention of the designers was for it to apply after the modification for scale, and that's how I do it. There's just too much energy bound up in a vehicle-scale shot that it's frankly suicide to stand in it's direct path. Plus, if the radius of the shot is the same or larger than the length of your lightsaber, you couldn't reflect the entire bolt anyway!

1 hour ago, Absol197 said:

The other thing to keep in mind is that each shot Ahsoka deflects is NOT one combat check, at the cost of three strain. In most scenes, Ahsoka is using Reflect maybe twice a round, depending on how many minion groups of droids are in the encounter, and each use is her protecting herself from an entire volley of shots, maybe as many as a dozen or more over 20 seconds to a minute of time.

An important point that often gets lost in the transition from highly simulationist games like D&D and WoD to this system is that each roll is NOT a single swing of the sword, a single pull off the trigger; it is not a single attack. Each round can stretch all the way across a minutes of time, and each roll is a Combat Check, the sum total result of all your attempts to harm your target dieing that time, including a flurry of swings and a volley of shots.

When you look at it that way, if Ahsoka with her 2-4 ranks in Reflect is paying ~0.25 strain per blaster bolt reflected it really doesn't seem quite so bad, now does it ?

EDIT: On the subject of vehicle scale weapons, crits, and death, Darzil has it right: crits are what kills, not raw damage. How I work this is as follows: obviously, for exceeding your wound threshold, you take a crit. If your wounds would exceed double your threshold, you stop counting and take another crit, and add to the result the number over (WT x 2) you went. So for example, you have a threshold of 15, and are at 28, and take 10 damage. You are now at 30 wounds, and take another crit with an additional +8. The 10 damage would have taken you to 38, but you can't go over 30, so the excess adds to the crit result.

This works well, especially for vehicle hits. You're almost certainly going to go over your threshold, which gets you a crit, and you may go over double, which will add any excess damage to the result because of the giant explosion that just happened ten feet away. If the vehicle actually activated it's crit rating on you, the result is treated as having a Vicious rating equal to the weapon's base damage against personal scale targets, so you're likely dead.

And for the original question about reflecting vehicle shots with lightsabers: I'm fairly certain that the intention of the designers was for it to apply after the modification for scale, and that's how I do it. There's just too much energy bound up in a vehicle-scale shot that it's frankly suicide to stand in it's direct path. Plus, if the radius of the shot is the same or larger than the length of your lightsaber, you couldn't reflect the entire bolt anyway!

I believe the devs have stated it was before the multiple. My problem isn’t that the shots can be reflected, it’s that a rifle shot is more difficult to reflect with the above ruling than a vehicle shot.

1 minute ago, Eoen said:

I believe the devs have stated it was before the multiple. My problem isn’t that the shots can be reflected, it’s that a rifle shot is more difficult to reflect with the above ruling than a vehicle shot.

Really? Jareth said this not too far back:

3 hours ago, Jareth Valar said:

I posted this scenario to the boards and the Devs myself a while back. The 'official' word I got back is that Reflect was intended to be applied AFTER the multiplier, but you can certainly run it at you table that way if you wish.

We have been using it at our table for quite some time where it is applied before.

End result? Our Jedi still runs from vehicular weapons but can cover an escape for a hit....maybe two (low damage or poorly aimed ones).

Saying that the word they got back from the devs is that it's applied after, which I think makes sense. When F&D was written, there was no canon instance of Reflect being used on vehicle-scale weaponry. The closest we came was Luke reflecting the speeder bike's shots, and FFG cleverly covered their ground on that by making the weapons mounted on speeder bikes personal scale weapons.

Now though, with Rebels characters blocking TIE fighter shots left and right, the "official" ruling may have changed, in which case I am going to entirely ignore it. Because you're right, it makes no sense.

Well, it should be noted, that even back in the days of the old EU, we had Luke deflecting ATAT shots in Dark Empire .

I think what folks are overlooking is that vehicle-scale weapons would be rolling against a high difficulty (at least Hard, possibly even Formidable) since most PCs are Silhouette 1, making them very difficult to hit.

Add in the Sense power, or things like Dodge and Side Step, and it becomes insanely difficult for an NPC gunner to hit a Jedi PC.

So when you see a Jedi on the screen 'deflecting' fire from vehicle weapons, what's more likely happening is that the attacker failed to generate any uncancelled successes on their combat check, and the GM letting the targeted Jedi PC narrate it as deflecting the attack with their lightsaber even if the Reflect talent never once comes into play.

As for the scene in Rebels of Ezra and Kanan using their lightsabers to protect the Ghost during the prior season of Rebels, that was more a case of them using their actions to provide an additional setback die onto the combat checks of the attacking Imperial TIEs. Which being Filoni is very much a "hey, that looks/sounds cool!" sort of storyteller, as a GM he'd be totally onboard with Ezra and Kanan's players narrating it as them using their lightsabers to deflect the TIEs' shots.

That's definitely a valid interpretation of the mechanics of those scenes, yes .

5 hours ago, Darzil said:

Damage doesn't kill, crits do. So by the book, that'd be one crit for going over damage threshold. I could see adding a modifier to it, though.

I don't think people should be tanking turbolaser blasts. I don't think I can suspend that much disbelief, to believe that getting hit by capital ship weaponry wouldn't instantly vaporize someone, and having it just "miss" feels like GM favoritism keeping an enemy alive in spite of player creativity.

This really comes down to the type of game you want to run. SW has a lot of material to work from but a lot of it is contradictory and coloured by the medium it was done in. What I mean is that the films, 3D animated cartoons, 2D animated cartoons and comics, and books all have somewhat different universal physics. The original films have what I would call Real World physics meaning that even though there is space magic and laser swords it doesn't feel like what you are seeing breaks any of the laws of the universe. The newer films, and to some extent the Prequels, at times start to get a little cartoony with travel time and being able to see worlds in other star systems blowing up in real time but the characters are still grounded in real world physics. The 3D animated series are a little less grounded in reality and at times you really notice it but in general they feel only a little more cartoony. The 2D cartoons and comics are very cartoony in their physics with characters doing things that just break physical laws all the time. Finally the books in which the physics are generally in the real world but occasionally take liberties for the story.

FFG's SW is by default closer to real world physics but you can easily play it more cartoony like Rebels or Clone Wars without changing any of the RAW just through narration. You can even play it like the cartoons and comics but you'll likely find that you're using the Rule of Cool a lot more to do it.

Regardless of how you play make sure if you are the GM you are consistent because nothing breaks the necessary suspension of disbelief for your Players than the game world physics doing something unexpected.

On 2.11.2017 at 6:20 AM, Darthtator said:

So here is a question for everybody. I have recently had an inquisitor fight the party. They stole the inquisitors ship and used to to successfully hit the inquisitor with 10 damage ship scale. The inquisitor has the reflect ability that reflects 6 damage for the price of 3 strain. My question is this: first can reflect even be used against a ships ranged combat in the first place? If so does reflect only reflect personal scale damage or can it reflect ship scale damage? Any help would be appreciated even more so If you guys have specific page numbers for the rules on this. Thank you in advance.

Sincerely,

Frustrated GM.

It would be a cool house rule to allow reflect to apply before the conversion from planetary scale damage to personal damage takes place. But by raw it seems like you first convert and then apply reflect.

I am still in favor of that house rule. It fits cannon.