6 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:I don't get the critique of Padme's IN since there's so many perspectives flying in from every angle
but the so called "hand-wave" argument is incredibly relevant. FFG explicitly stated that Initiative != pilot skill, SPECIFICALLY because silly arguments like this would occasionally break out. It's an ambiguous gameplay stat , why are we giving it such fluff importance?
Now I'm definitely not singling out the OP here, because this was certainly tongue-in-cheek, but I've seen some ridiculous vitriol on facebook groups about Padme's initiative (and her being a pilot in the first place). It's kinda disturbing how invested people can be in a supposed "contradiction" to what they feel is canon, especially when it's something as vague and ambiguous as "initiative"
Besides, regardless how one feels about the character and the movies, she was clearly shown to be a badass in episodes 1 & 2. So...who cares if she's I 4!?
Yeah, a lot of people are **icks, that's for sure. Personally I don't care at all, but I do like discussing it
I don't really buy that whole "initiative isn't pilot skill" thing, I feel like that actually is an example of developer hand waving to conceal a case of gameplay legitimately trumping fluff, ie for balance they had to make some fluffily great pilots a lower initiative. I think it's easier to justify in that direction - it's easy enough to say "this pilots's great but their style is they move first rather than reacting to their opponent's move" or some other exception to the general rule (and it *is* a general rule, just as with 1st edition PS high Initiative massively correlates with fluffily better pilot) but I think it's harder to justify the other way.
Having a high Initiative gives a pilot the ability to react to another pilots actions, which can be fluffily explained as either they predict the opponents actions, or their reactions are just incredibly quick, but how do you explain a non-magic non-expert pilot having either ability? I don't see any canon evidence to support Padmé being magic or an expert pilot, indeed I see canon evidence that she was a fighter pilot noob, albeit a natural.