One of my players - long before the show came out - started playing an off brand Mandalorian (basically her clan, ages and ages and ages ago said "naw, we're not doing your thing" and went off on their own) - but they still keep the traditions and trappings and whatnot of the culture. And while we've always known that beskar was a big deal, now we've gotten a look at the ritual and pomp and circumstance behind it's importance to the culture and whatnot. With that bigger picture, I thought "Hey, it would be kind of cool to set her up with her own badass beskar armor, and the story arc to secure said beskar". The obvious, easy way to simulate that, mechanics-wise, is some plastoid armor with the cortosis quality.

Problem is? I don't really want to do that.

Couple of reasons, starting with I don't want to drop a 10 grand really powerful attachment on one character and not have something cool for everyone else. Plus, you know, it's really, really strong stuff with the potential to set the game askew. So yeah, not really a fan of that option.

The other option would throwing a free Superior at her, but lighter encumbrance and a couple of soak seems too far the other direction, that it's not special enough. So I was brainstorming with the player, and we came up with perhaps armor with a couple of blacks for defense? She seemed happy with it, and on the surface it doesn't seem all that game breaking.

But I thought I'd turn to you guys. Any thoughts on a happy medium between lightsaber proof and "yippie. more soak."?

44 minutes ago, Desslok said:

One of my players - long before the show came out - started playing an off brand Mandalorian (basically her clan, ages and ages and ages ago said "naw, we're not doing your thing" and went off on their own) - but they still keep the traditions and trappings and whatnot of the culture. And while we've always known that beskar was a big deal, now we've gotten a look at the ritual and pomp and circumstance behind it's importance to the culture and whatnot. With that bigger picture, I thought "Hey, it would be kind of cool to set her up with her own badass beskar armor, and the story arc to secure said beskar". The obvious, easy way to simulate that, mechanics-wise, is some plastoid armor with the cortosis quality.

Problem is? I don't really want to do that.

Couple of reasons, starting with I don't want to drop a 10 grand really powerful attachment on one character and not have something cool for everyone else. Plus, you know, it's really, really strong stuff with the potential to set the game askew. So yeah, not really a fan of that option.

The other option would throwing a free Superior at her, but lighter encumbrance and a couple of soak seems too far the other direction, that it's not special enough. So I was brainstorming with the player, and we came up with perhaps armor with a couple of blacks for defense? She seemed happy with it, and on the surface it doesn't seem all that game breaking.

But I thought I'd turn to you guys. Any thoughts on a happy medium between lightsaber proof and "yippie. more soak."?

I asked the Devs about Beskar a few months back, and yes, it is covered by the Cortosis Weave attachment (as is Phrik and any other lightsaber resistant material), given that Beskar ignores Breach . Part of its specific qualities is that it is extremely resistant to lightsabers.

It doesn't provide more soak though, so against blasters and other non-breach weapons, that attachment is no more effective than other armors. It should also be noted that, canonically, Beskar is extremely valuable . It's expensive, very, very expensive. So, if he wants Beskar he needs the Cortosis Weave attachment, so, yeah, a 10,000 credit investment is definitely warranted if he wants armor made of Beskar.

1 hour ago, Desslok said:

But I thought I'd turn to you guys. Any thoughts on a happy medium between lightsaber proof and "yippie. more soak."?

I guess it depends on how often your bad guys are attacking the party with Breach and Pierce weapons.

If those two weapon qualities only show up very rarely on your baddies, then the beskar (which mechanically is just the Cortosis Weave attachment) doesn't really have any major effects, and is almost a waste. Of course, if your game is set in a time frame where the baddies have Breach weapons aplenty, then it becomes insanely valuable to the PC in question.

One possible alternative is that instead of providing the Cortosis quality, beskar-made armor instead provides ranks of Durable (I'd say base of two ranks, with mod options to add anywhere from one to at most three additional ranks), to account for its durability and allowing the wearer to avoid serious injury. This would provide a useful benefit (crits won't be as nasty as they might otherwise have been) but not necessarily an overpowering one as the PC is still taking wounds from successful attacks. As another idea, you could have the beskar plating increase the number of advantage needed to trigger a crit by one, and then mod options to add a couple ranks of Durable on top of that.

55 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

As another idea, you could have the beskar plating increase the number of advantage needed to trigger a crit by one, and then mod options to add a couple ranks of Durable on top of that.

The character scale version of Massive from the ship rules.

6 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

I guess it depends on how often your bad guys are attacking the party with Breach and Pierce weapons.

Hard to say - we're playing in the Clone Wars and kind of a Jedi-ish game, but not really. More a handful of alternate force traditions (and one ronin Padawan), so the potential of bad guys with sabers is certainly there, but it's not the main focus of the game. But it's there enough that you can see why I'd be reluctant to drop a goodie like that on one of the players.

6 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

One possible alternative is . . . .

Oooh, I quite like that. Much better than my two defense dice idea! I think I'll be 'avin that then.

Make it a story element to acquire the upgrade, 10k doesn't seem like that much. As a GM you have an unlimited prop budget of your own, and you can asset strip the players with ease.

Are you running an Edge game?

I'm kind of mystified as to why so many GM's are so concerned about their players getting cash. It's barely even mentioned in most of the Star Wars media, Amidala always had cash, Leia never worried about it, Lando was rich, the Jedi in the clone wars never seemed concerned about funds, Hondo had a pirate fleet, but had to make payroll, Maul and Savage stole credits with ease; Asajj Ventress made money easily enough when she was cut loose from the Sith; Dooku was a trillionaire, the Nightsisters controlled an entire planet, the only person who ever seemed to worry about it is Han.

Sabine inherited her Beskar, the Mandalorian got his on the first and third episode.

Last time I played Edge we went to the dark side rather quick, my droid bounty hunter hand something like 450,000 credits but nowhere to spend it. Last time I played Force and Destiny I ended up with 9 million credits in precious metals we got from an ancient Sith bank account (which we gave trillions of to the New Republic jerk offs) it was more than a hassle to retain it safely. I can't say the game was monty haul either, it was on a backwater planet I couldn't have spent the money if I tried.

The flip side I guess is I have seen players go after gear like they getting ready to raid. A lot of Star Wars characters don't seem concerned about gear, they have it or they don't.

9 hours ago, Eoen said:

Make it a story element to acquire the upgrade, 10k doesn't seem like that much.

Oh, I'm totally planning on turning getting the metal into a game - probably some kind of heist. It's still a work in progress.

9 hours ago, Eoen said:

Are you running an Edge game?

Kind of? It's a hard game to pigeonhole like that. If we define it by what books we're using, all three lines are up for grabs. We're not in the military, so it's not AoR, we've got our various stripes of force users, but we're running around on the outer rim doing kind of edge-ish things? I'm going to go with we're playing a Star Wars: The A-Team game.

9 hours ago, Eoen said:

I'm kind of mystified as to why so many GM's are so concerned about their players getting cash.

I'm on record as not caring about the money , so that's not my concern. I'm concerned that dropping anti-saber measures into what might potentially might be a bad-guys-with-sabers game might imbalance things while simultaneously giving one player an anti-saber goodie while leaving the others going "Where's my cool thing?"

Hence trying to find a compromise between neutering sabers and making something that should be significant in-story mechanically pointless.

On 12/5/2019 at 9:48 PM, Desslok said:

One of my players - long before the show came out - started playing an off brand Mandalorian (basically her clan, ages and ages and ages ago said "naw, we're not doing your thing" and went off on their own) - but they still keep the traditions and trappings and whatnot of the culture. And while we've always known that beskar was a big deal, now we've gotten a look at the ritual and pomp and circumstance behind it's importance to the culture and whatnot. With that bigger picture, I thought "Hey, it would be kind of cool to set her up with her own badass beskar armor, and the story arc to secure said beskar". The obvious, easy way to simulate that, mechanics-wise, is some plastoid armor with the cortosis quality.

Problem is? I don't really want to do that.

Couple of reasons, starting with I don't want to drop a 10 grand really powerful attachment on one character and not have something cool for everyone else. Plus, you know, it's really, really strong stuff with the potential to set the game askew. So yeah, not really a fan of that option.

The other option would throwing a free Superior at her, but lighter encumbrance and a couple of soak seems too far the other direction, that it's not special enough. So I was brainstorming with the player, and we came up with perhaps armor with a couple of blacks for defense? She seemed happy with it, and on the surface it doesn't seem all that game breaking.

But I thought I'd turn to you guys. Any thoughts on a happy medium between lightsaber proof and "yippie. more soak."?

You could also simply rule Beskar as being Superior, with that juicy extra soak.