Trying to back to post... XD

One doubt, the main reason for your change what is exactly? And do you care about balance or just on "canon"?

On 5/10/2020 at 8:31 AM, Rosco74 said:

Hello, as I said in another thread I am new to the Jedi rules, as I never had one on my table. Here come another problem for me with the reflect talent. For me, when a Jedi reflect a blaster shot, there is no difference between blaster shots. The problem is for exemple between a standard blaster shot wich is 6 damage (so minimum 7 with one success) and a Droideka built-in blaster wich is damage 12 (so minimum 13 with one success)...

According my Starwars experience, and the first movie, Anakin and Ben had no more issue deflecting the Droideka shots than any other blaster shots... The problem is that all is about damage. This talent is less and less usefull as the opposent has a bigger gun. This will for sure push players or Npc to use bigger guns against Jedi.

First scene of The Phantom Menace. As from Rise of the Separatist, Ben has Improved Reflect 4, wich allow him to reduce damage by 6... even with the minimum damage of the Droideka (13) and perfect lightsaber movements we can see in the movie (lol) that's 7 damage as a minimum. Still around 2 after soak reduction. It just point me right as I write this that even a Jedi will still be soak dependent, and thus will search to boost soak with big armors as well because of the Reflect mechanic

So my question is, any one has ever think about a rule for all or nothing deflect like we see in the movies? and not just a nosense damage reduction that I cannot explain to my players. ? Thanks

edit: I think I will just add the Deflect talent level as the Adversary talent. You have deflect 4 ? you upgrade 4 times the difficulty for blasters to shoot you.. less mechanics

I haven't read the thread but I expect @Donovan Morningfire would mention a house rule where each rank of reflect adds one failure to the roll, and once there are no net successes the attack misses.

14 hours ago, EliasWindrider said:

I haven't read the thread but I expect @Donovan Morningfire would mention a house rule where each rank of reflect adds one failure to the roll, and once there are no net successes the attack misses.

The problem with a house rule where ranks in reflect add failures to the roll is it makes Improved Reflect irrelevant. And because if that it doesn't makes Reflect more accurate with what we see in movies. Quite the contrary since in those movies a big part of reflecting blaster shots is to return them to the shooter. Witch is exactly what Improved Reflect does.

Hi Wolf!

Nope, with the houserule Improved Reflect has the same effect because it activates with Threats and Despairs, it doesn't care about Failures. And most deflected bolt go "nowhere" but a few one make a direct hit. Remember that and attacks is a consecution of blaster shots

Hope it helped!

11 hours ago, WolfRider said:

The problem with a house rule where ranks in reflect add failures to the roll is it makes Improved Reflect irrelevant. And because if that it doesn't makes Reflect more accurate with what we see in movies. Quite the contrary since in those movies a big part of reflecting blaster shots is to return them to the shooter. Witch is exactly what Improved Reflect does.

8 hours ago, Josep Maria said:

Hi Wolf!

Nope, with the houserule Improved Reflect has the same effect because it activates with Threats and Despairs, it doesn't care about Failures. And most deflected bolt go "nowhere" but a few one make a direct hit. Remember that and attacks is a consecution of blaster shots

Hope it helped!

To clarify a bit here, Improved Reflect requires use of Reflect. In the case of Reflect adding Failure, you still have to use Reflect to make the attack "miss" so Improved Reflect is still eligible to trigger. It does require a rewording of the talents to make it clear, however. Here's what I would suggest:

Reflect:
When the character suffers a hit from a Ranged (Light), Ranged (Heavy), or Gunnery combat check, before damage is calculated, the character may take the Reflect incidental. The character suffers 3 strain and adds a number of Failure to the result equal to the character's ranks in Reflect. This talent may only be used once per hit and when the character is wielding a Lightsaber weapon.

Improved Reflect:
When the character suffers a hit from a Ranged (Light), Ranged (Heavy), or Gunnery combat check and uses the Reflect incidental to add Failure to the roll, after the attack is resolved, the character may spend Despair or three Threat to automatically hit one target within medium range, dealing the same damage as the hit from the initial ranged attack.
The ranged attack’s hit must be one that is able to be reflected and redirected (generally only blaster weapons or other energy attacks fall into this category; anything else is subject to GM oversight). This talent may not be used if the original attack incapacitates the character.

This said, I still suggest the RAW in this case.

So, if the attacks is missed thanks to the added Failures, Improved Reflect can be activated. Nice

I did a lot of testing. I don't want to deviate too much to the basic rules as I have not much experience with lightsabers yet. I will follow the majority and stick to the basic rules, with a little boost. Yes it will unbalance the game to the Jedis, but that's not an issue for my game. I think the ability to deflect a blaster shot should be linked to your lightsaber skill, and the talent barrel roll inspied me. After some testing it seems to fit my needs, so I will go like that.

Deflect talent now reduce damage by 1 + deflect level + lightsaber skill. So if you intend to use a lightsaber you will hopefully have 1 rank, and with the first level of Deflect talent there will be no change. You will get better as you upgrade you lightsaber skill wich seems correct to me and still represent an investment. Eventually you will reach a maximum of 6+ Deflect lvl with a lightsaber skill of 5. Rest is unchanged. I did several tests solo and I like it. Thanks for your help.

Its a good alternative and maybe it can be applied to a few good things.

Also remember that the rule of reduce damage doesnt work in scenes like Ashoka against dwarf droids with laser naval scale weapons or some scenes that jedi deflect fire from destroyers. In rebels kanan do it too but not sure. Maybe from vehicles?

Failures can work against naval scale damage. A minimum tie fighter with 4*10 laser damage ignores any personal damage absortion. And jedi seem that can deflect them even bigger fire.

As I said my HR are focused on canon instead balance. Also consider deflect as an extension of ur lightsaber skill.

Hope it helped 😉

I mus admit I didn't think about deflecting startfighter lasers yet lol. But yeah thanks for the tip 🙂

7 hours ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

To clarify a bit here, Improved Reflect requires use of Reflect. In the case of Reflect adding Failure, you still have to use Reflect to make the attack "miss" so Improved Reflect is still eligible to trigger. It does require a rewording of the talents to make it clear, however. Here's what I would suggest:

Reflect:
When the character suffers a hit from a Ranged (Light), Ranged (Heavy), or Gunnery combat check, before damage is calculated, the character may take the Reflect incidental. The character suffers 3 strain and adds a number of Failure to the result equal to 2 plus the character's ranks in Reflect. This talent may only be used once per hit and when the character is wielding a Lightsaber weapon.

Improved Reflect:
When the character suffers a hit from a Ranged (Light), Ranged (Heavy), or Gunnery combat check and uses the Reflect incidental to add Failure to the roll, after the attack is resolved, the character may spend Despair or three Threat to automatically hit one target within medium range, dealing the same damage as the hit from the initial ranged attack.
The ranged attack’s hit must be one that is able to be reflected and redirected (generally only blaster weapons or other energy attacks fall into this category; anything else is subject to GM oversight). This talent may not be used if the original attack incapacitates the character.

This said, I still suggest the RAW in this case.

@Donovan Morningfire 's version of the house rule was straight ranks in reflect rather than 2+ranks in reflect, he claimed that was a better balance... I haven't tried the house rule myself

6 minutes ago, EliasWindrider said:

@Donovan Morningfire 's version of the house rule was straight ranks in reflect rather than 2+ranks in reflect, he claimed that was a better balance... I haven't tried the house rule myself

That makes sense, I was only focusing on the order of stuff happening. I'll edit the post though.

7 hours ago, Rosco74 said:

I mus admit I didn't think about deflecting startfighter lasers yet lol. But yeah thanks for the tip 🙂

And always remember, with failure version is a do or don't, because if you faill the deflect you eat the entire damage XDD

7 hours ago, Josep Maria said:

And always remember, with failure version is a do or don't, because if you faill the deflect you eat the entire damage XDD

Actually no... the added failures reduce number of successes... which reduces successes and therefore damage by number of failures added.

3 minutes ago, EliasWindrider said:

Actually no... the added failures reduce number of successes... which reduces successes and therefore damage by number of failures added.

true but if there is 1 success you get base damage +1. which has less granularity than mitigating x damage.

There's still the core issue of "Reflect/Parry applies failures instead of damage reduction" house rule making it increasingly easier for a PC to out-and-out negate an attack with those talents, especially if they have enough other defensive abilities to impact the attacker's difficulty. Which then results in combats being dragged out a lot longer than is generally fun for the majority of the table, and can potentially lead to some bitterness on the part of the other players as they see the saber monkey pretty much ignoring damage at what is perceived to be that player's leisure while they are largely stuck sucking up damage.

From what the OP has posted here and a couple other places, it doesn't sound like they've actually played F&D characters using the rules as presented. I would strongly suggest that before you go tweaking things, play the rules as presented. Granted, this is something any sensible GM should do before they start monkeying around with things, but it's advice that more often than not gets overlooked. The rules may not be perfect, but they've seen a far greater amount of playtesting than anything that you've come up with as a house rule. And until you've played the rules as presented at least a few times, you can't really know what's going to wind up broken by suddenly changing something.

1 hour ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

There's still the core issue of "Reflect/Parry applies failures instead of damage reduction" house rule making it increasingly easier for a PC to out-and-out negate an attack with those talents, especially if they have enough other defensive abilities to impact the attacker's difficulty. Which then results in combats being dragged out a lot longer than is generally fun for the majority of the table, and can potentially lead to some bitterness on the part of the other players as they see the saber monkey pretty much ignoring damage at what is perceived to be that player's leisure while they are largely stuck sucking up damage.

From what the OP has posted here and a couple other places, it doesn't sound like they've actually played F&D characters using the rules as presented. I would strongly suggest that before you go tweaking things, play the rules as presented. Granted, this is something any sensible GM should do before they start monkeying around with things, but it's adviceise that more often than not gets overlooked. The rules may not be perfect, but they've seen a far greater amount of playtesting than anything that you've come up with as a house rule. And until you've played the rules as presented at least a few times, you can't really know what's going to wind up broken by suddenly changing something.

As always you offer generally sage advice.

I'm gming a play by post where characters started with 900 earned xp. At the request of a newbie player I built an optimized character for him. The character is at 970 earned xp now. The character has 6 ranks of reflect, 6 soak, 4 defense, 17 wounds, 17 strain. I threw the first really challenging encounter at the characters over the 3 or so weeks. By the end of the encounter, the character was at 0/17 wounds and 17/17 strain. The point is the situation you're describing isn't very different from the current one, yeah he ignored/shrugged off damage but the strain cost (3 per reflect) plus some extra maneuvers, even with ebb/flow, really balances things out.

The way "around" this is supreme reflect which (the character does not have) means they won't be attacking so that's also a huge balancing factor.

So in a moderatel high level game with an optimized character the house rule makes little difference, it might get less optimized jedi to the same place sooner, which seems less likely to encourage power gaming.

Every character got a chance to shine in the encounter, each in the own way they had specialized.

37 minutes ago, EliasWindrider said:

As always you offer generally sage advice.

I'm gming a play by post where characters started with 900 earned xp. At the request of a newbie player I built an optimized character for him. The character is at 970 earned xp now. The character has 6 ranks of reflect, 6 soak, 4 defense, 17 wounds, 17 strain. I threw the first really challenging encounter at the characters over the 3 or so weeks. By the end of the encounter, the character was at 0/17 wounds and 17/17 strain. The point is the situation you're describing isn't very different from the current one, yeah he ignored/shrugged off damage but the strain cost (3 per reflect) plus some extra maneuvers, even with ebb/flow, really balances things out.

The way "around" this is supreme reflect which (the character does not have) means they won't be attacking so that's also a huge balancing factor.

So in a moderatel high level game with an optimized character the house rule makes little difference, it might get less optimized jedi to the same place sooner, which seems less likely to encourage power gaming.

Every character got a chance to shine in the encounter, each in the own way they had specialized.

Have you played around with peerless interception? how does it effect strain expenditure

I mean, if a tie laser shot deals 4x10 of damage, a +2 or +3 doesn't care so much XDDD

Apart I'm a lucky GM and my players don't get jelous between them XD Everyone knows its role. Guys with blue lightsabers fights the ones with reds, the ones with blaster fight the white dressed ones and so on. When we create rules in our games we don't care about balance or "jealosy". We understand that the main goal in our games is to build a awesome collective story, that this isn't a confrontation between players an GM or who has more dices on X skill. As I said I'm a lucky master.

Also we restrict talents to "scene justifications". We cannot take a talent in our games just because we got de XP. Are full consensus sessions.

But as Donovan said, rules are not perfect, but try it first, they are pretty good, and feel free to houserule them if you need it.

1 hour ago, Daeglan said:

Have you played around with peerless interception? how does it effect strain expenditure

No, none of my players have signature abilities... but it's still 3 strain per round for reflect and lly potentially another 3 for parry.... the point of peerless interception is to let people tank 2 peer game and survive an onslaught of battle droids or maybe order 66. But 2 jedi with circle of shelter and guardian of the republic standing back to back and protecting each other get the same effect.

1 minute ago, EliasWindrider said:

No, none of my players have signature abilities... but it's still 3 strain per round for reflect and lly potentially another 3 for parry.... the point of peerless interception is to let people tank 2 peer game and survive an onslaught of battle droids or maybe order 66. But 2 jedi with circle of shelter and guardian of the republic standing back to back and protecting each other get the same effect.

Actually, Camouflage has a Sig: ...The Harder They Fall.

19 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

Actually, Camouflage has a Sig: ...The Harder They Fall.

I forgot about that.... thanks for keeping me honest.

20 hours ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

Actually, Camouflage has a Sig: ...The Harder They Fall.

That information startled me - I hadn't realised that Camouflage's career was Engineer instead of Clone Soldier.

19 minutes ago, Bellona said:

That information startled me - I hadn't realised that Camouflage's career was Engineer instead of Clone Soldier.

I went Engineer: Droid Specialist so I could pick up Design Flaw x2 and ...The Harder They Fall since it would mean no one else could duplicate his setup and he'd be useful against droids and light droid tanks. Makes it a bit more expensive to pick up the Clone Trooper specializations, but I figured it'd be worth it.

Not sure if someone asked but, block a blaster with a hand (Vader on Bespin) from where it comes?

Thanks!

Just now, Josep Maria said:

Not sure if someone asked but, block a blaster with a hand (Vader on Bespin) from where it comes?

Thanks!

The Protect power.