Thinking of undoing some old house rules on lightsaber fights. I run duels as opposed checks, to try and get the feel of an epic duel. I thought this approach would be indicative of training, and would leave to more experienced Saberswingers triumphing, see Vader vs Padawan Luke. However, I've recently been starting to see people's point about talents representing defensive training, and this approach soft nerfs a lot of defensive talents (plus the fact that it makes Inquisitors and PCs look way weaker to blasters.) With this in mind, I've got two places I can go with this: rework it to make a single opposed lightsaber check for the entire duel, or go for the swing by swing average check. What should I do?

My preference is stick with the Core on combat rules. If the character wants to be more defensive with a Lightsaber, they should look into talents like Dodge, Defensive Stance, Defensive Training, Parry and the Force Power Sense.

I am interested to know what the opposed checks are giving you that the "average" checks are not? If it's threat and despair, then GroggyGolem is right. Your players should be looking at those defensive talents. while you should be handing ranks of adversary to your NPCs.

My favorite GMs use fluid, concise, but rich description every round to add the tension and drama to a duel. I try and do the same, but I am no Matthew Mercer.

What I do is run it Raw but add an extra Initiative slot for the duelists to give it a more cinematic feel of two masters going at it. It also makes for better BBG survivability.

Have you thought of running it as an opposed skill challenge? Base it off the Chase rules:

Each round both participants get to act once (normal action/manoeuvre) to do anything but a combat check, plus at the end of each round they both perform a competitive combat check with a Simple difficulty modified by Defense, Dodge, Adversary ect.

The winner of the competitive check lands a blow, with “additional success” being the difference between the two.

The first character to achieve a net 8 uncancelled success “wins”. Otherwise the winner is the one who isn’t unconscious, whichever happens first.

As an example a PC vs Inquisitor:

PC goes first, decides to use 2 ranks of Defensive Stance and heave a table into the path of the Inquisitor, hopefully making their attack harder. Make an Athletics check, with Success they add 1 Difficulty to the Inquisitor Combat Check.

Inquisitor next, decides to Aim and Taunt the PC. Makes a Coercion and fails with Advantage to inflict 2 strain.

now they both make their Simple Competitive checks. PC has a difficulty of 1, upgraded once, due to the Inquisitor Adversary 2, also a Setback for Inquisitor Defense.

Inquisitor has a Difficulty of 2, Upgraded once, with 2 Setback for PC Defense.

After the roll the PC wins by 2 Success, causing damage as if they succeeded on a combat check with 2 Success

15 hours ago, Dayham said:

Thinking of undoing some old house rules on lightsaber fights. I run duels as opposed checks, to try and get the feel of an epic duel. I thought this approach would be indicative of training, and would leave to more experienced Saberswingers triumphing, see Vader vs Padawan Luke. However, I've recently been starting to see people's point about talents representing defensive training, and this approach soft nerfs a lot of defensive talents (plus the fact that it makes Inquisitors and PCs look way weaker to blasters.) With this in mind, I've got two places I can go with this: rework it to make a single opposed lightsaber check for the entire duel, or go for the swing by swing average check. What should I do?

Out of curiosity, do you find that running combat as an opposed check makes it slower due to less hits? I was thinking of making all Brawl and Melee combat against an active defender work like this, but haven't gotten around to testing it out. What's your feel of it?

You basically only roll Success with lots of Threat or Failure with Advantage. It becomes difficult to trigger any weapon qualities as you rely on Triumphs

7 hours ago, Archlyte said:

Out of curiosity, do you find that running combat as an opposed check makes it slower due to less hits? I was thinking of making all Brawl and Melee combat against an active defender work like this, but haven't gotten around to testing it out. What's your feel of it?

It does feel slower, yes. Still, lots more chances of Dispairs, and it adds a shadow buff to leveling up Lightsaber as fast as possible. I fear it is too late for me, but you can still avoid the min-max! Still, did lead to a cool feel of " Learn or DIE " whenever they had down time after their Inquisitor's pursuit (And is probably the only thing that let half the group survive their first encounter with Sixth Hunter.)

7 hours ago, Richardbuxton said:

You basically only roll Success with lots of Threat or Failure with Advantage. It becomes difficult to trigger any weapon qualities as you rely on Triumphs

Yep. That, plus my new understanding of talents were what motivated me to rework this.

12 hours ago, Richardbuxton said:

Have you thought of running it as an opposed skill challenge? Base it off the Chase rules:

Each round both participants get to act once (normal action/manoeuvre) to do anything but a combat check, plus at the end of each round they both perform a competitive combat check with a Simple difficulty modified by Defense, Dodge, Adversary ect.

The winner of the competitive check lands a blow, with “additional success” being the difference between the two.

The first character to achieve a net 8 uncancelled success “wins”. Otherwise the winner is the one who isn’t unconscious, whichever happens first.

As an example a PC vs Inquisitor:

PC goes first, decides to use 2 ranks of Defensive Stance and heave a table into the path of the Inquisitor, hopefully making their attack harder. Make an Athletics check, with Success they add 1 Difficulty to the Inquisitor Combat Check.

Inquisitor next, decides to Aim and Taunt the PC. Makes a Coercion and fails with Advantage to inflict 2 strain.

now they both make their Simple Competitive checks. PC has a difficulty of 1, upgraded once, due to the Inquisitor Adversary 2, also a Setback for Inquisitor Defense.

Inquisitor has a Difficulty of 2, Upgraded once, with 2 Setback for PC Defense.

After the roll the PC wins by 2 Success, causing damage as if they succeeded on a combat check with 2 Success

Not a bad idea! Will probably use this if I do any special duel checks.

What about a combination of the two, and set it up sort of like a chase sequence.

So you do the combat as normal, following RAW for difficulty and using talents etc.

HOWEVER! (dramatic pause)

During the initiative round, for the two (or more) duelists when it is the first of their 2 slots do not make a combat check, but instead must make a competitive or opposed (depending on if its vs each other or vs the environment)check to gain an advantage in the duel.

For example, Obi-wan (PC) and Anakin are fighting over the lava pits. during Obi's slot, they roll a competitive check (athletics) to jump to the slightly higher lava riverbank (as the jump is against the environment). They both succeed the check but Obi wins the competitive roll with more advantage than Anakin.

Once the winner is determined, they get the initiative for the combat check that happens during the second initiative slot, and they take turns rolling their combat check

So in our example Both our duelists passed their competitive check, but Obi-wan wins, and gains the slightly higher ground and gets to strike first. He attacks anakin as he does his jump, rolling a double Triumph and dismembering him and setting him on fire, (so below WT) and thus Anakin cannot attack back.

If their is a third duelist (I.E duel of the fates), just follow the above, but just determine who came second and third to determine combat initiative.

So in this method, it stays within the flow of the round order, and only one extra check is needed. This allows other PCs and NPCs to keep fighting in the background whilst still giving the Duel a spotlight focus for that PC and Nemesis.

I would also ensure that during the first check, a different skill is used, or apply a setback/upgrade difficulty if they try to do the same skill twice in a row (for being predictable)

@Funk Fu master , that sounds a bit like the Showdown rules from Fly Casual . And since the classic gunfighter showdown is almost identical to the similar scene in almost every samurai movie, I think it's absolutely evocative of a lightsaber duel.