AluminiumWolf said:

AluminiumWolf said:

However, with average tossing, if only one threat does not turn up a threat, you will have more successes than threats (7.125 - 1 = 6.125 failures vs 6.491 succeses). Since you're tossing a lot of Setback dice, and one difficulty dice (and a lot of Proficiency dice), the odds of a Failure switching to a threat (or blank) is larger than a success switching. (Sorry, I'm not up to crunching those exact numbers). But the average net sum would generate more threats and failures than successes/advantages.

In order to generate a certain instakill, you would need the following:

A total of at least 1 net success.

Then you would need, to be certain of instant kill, 14 advantages and/or Triumphs.

You use 1 advantage to trigger a crit, then 13 advantages to give +130 to the crit roll for a total of +150 due to the lightsaber's stats. Then, even if you roll a 1 on your crit roll, you will instantly kill.

Provided an average crit roll of 50, and counting a bleeding out result as good enough for an instant kill, you would still need 9 total advantages and/or triumphs on top of at least 1 success.

You are able to roll a maximum of 18 advantages with those dice, but given that you need at least 1 success, that's lowered to 16.

In other words: Instantly killing someone in this scenario is hard. It's even hard against a non-lightsaber-wielding opponent.

Well, the rules can never ever match "what the GM will accept" because no rules regulate GMs. If you want rules to regulate GMs then you don't need your GM at all, you need an automated resolution system. And then… oh, wait… it's like a video game. Except this forum is not devoted to EotE video game. And that's because there is no EotE video game.

I also feel that, yeah, they're going to take away my story gamer's badge if the combat system is actually fun for you to use, at least based on what you've said so far. And I wanna keep my badge, bacause that's what I play TTRPGs for, the story.

And this thread is called Lightsabers, not Lightsabers in video games.

Hey guys, I think at this point we should probably give up on trying to convince AluminiumWolf to see things any other way but his, in spite of some very well thought-out and worded counterpoints which he's pretty much just ignored.

It's gotten to the point this thread has nothing to do at all with lightsabers and instead has devolved into a back-and-forth arguments about why this isn't a glorified video game like he apparently wants.

Donovan Morningfire said:

GoblynByte said:

Well I find it very difficult to ever not fudge a deadly strike. Cause why is it okay to kill a PC this time when it wasn't that time? It seems… Arbitrary, so I just end up never killing anyone.

To an extent I just like transparency - if you are going to run the game on GM fiat, why are you pretending to have rules? Plus it tends to make playing the game hard for the players as they can never be sure of the effects their actions will have. And like I say it tends to totally kill tactical play as there effectively are no rules, so you can't get to the point where everyone understands the rules well enough to be really competing with each other.

"[H]as anyone (and I'm tempted to toss in a gods forbid here) had a chance to use lightsabers in-game yet?"

I did with my group whilst playtesting, and things came out as some of you have said/expected. We ended up with large dicepools, with similar numbers of positive and negative dice, which, baring any extremely unlikely rolls straight off the bat (like lots of blanks on the negative dice, and good rolls with the positive dice, with the first roll), we ended up with relatively long (covering several rounds) but cinematic fights - lots of parrying, back and forth, occasionally getting a glancing blow through, until someone was lucky and finished the fight.

Unless one participant turned and fled, though, we usually ended up with someone losing a limb, at the very least (as you'd expect from a proper lightsaber fight, and the same happened in the SW movies/games/books).

MILLANDSON said:

So how much is it a matter of rolling dice for no effect until someone lands a hit and takes out their opponent?

AluminiumWolf said:

*looks back at my post*

I don't believe I said "for no effect" anywhere in my post - not that you really want to participate in a discussion anyway. Advantage/threat/triumph/despair results all added to it, as they allow you to add negative dice to your opponents roll, or positive dice to your next roll, all of which can influence the next round of combat.

People who enjoy cinematic combats, like in the movies and other media involved in the setting, will enjoy it. You'll hate it, because it's not like Call of Duty (which doesn't pull off the ebb and flow of a melee combat between two equally well-trained people at all well - though it does have the knife, which instant kills people… guess that can't be fun either, right?).

I'm just saying, whif whif whif whif whif whif whif whif whif SPLAT doesn't seem to be enormously popular elsewhere…

AluminiumWolf said:

Other than in the Star Wars movies/books/computer games/etc, you mean? That is what the rules are trying to represent, and they do it well.

As I said though, you don't really care - you just want more reasons to dislike the game because it works like a TTRPG, and not Mass Effect.

MILLANDSON said:

Yeah, but you get to respawn pretty quickly so it doesn't matter. If you lost all your accumulated perks and whatnot every time you died though…

Anyway, I am mostly talking about the campaign mode, where the regenerating health does give you a good feeling of ducking for cover after talking fire.

And… have they ever made a Star Wars video game where lightsabres will cut anything in half with a single swipe? I'd swear I tend to spend a while battering health bars off people with my glow rod. (I mean, they made Bushido Blade where one good hit ended the fight, but while that was fun, it wasn't at all good for producing the long drawn out back and forth fights we see in the movies)

And in all seriousness… isn't Mass Effect (and Halo, and Call of Duty, and God of War and all the rest) really, really important to sci-fi nerds these days?

I mean heck, who hasn't played Mass Effect here? Are those not the kinds of experiences we want to be creating on the tabletop? Don't people… want their characters to be able to act like Shepard?

I am sooooooo done with debating this point with you. Go and play the way you want to play. I for one am glad to revel in the stated goal of designing a narrative RPG. If you do not prefer a narrative RPG go to find one that you prefer. You're not going to like this one.

GoblynByte said:

I guess I am not sure a narrative RPG would focus on how much damage a blaster 'realistically' does. :-)

http://www.pelgranepress.com/?p=6317

Northman said:

In the films no, but in the old republic video game trailer, this chick catches the blade of one in her had and absorbs it… dropped my jaw. Cool, even if it isn't canon.

$hamrock said:

That's also probably an example of Satele using the same trick that Vader used on Cloud City to negate and absorb the energy from the weapon.

But without the Force? Oh yeah, she'd have been hosed.

Cyril said:

Yeah, for the most part.

Though a crafty GM could tinker together some "toys". For that matter, I'm no expert on the Mandos, but didn't they have some method for dealing with Jedi, I mean they had a reputation for such, at least.

Why are everyone arguing with AluminiumWolf? We get it. He doesn't like RPGs. So, how about them lightsabers huh?

$hamrock said:

Here ya go . The technique is officially called "Tutaminis." Mostly EU canon, but canon all the same.

Also, to lightsabers in EotE, is there a reason their damage is written as "10" instead of "+10"? All the other melee weapons have a "+" symbol.

awayputurwpn said:

I would assume that's because strength doesn't factor into lightsaber damage. This was the case with the WEG version as well and their weightlessness would lend credibility to that concept.

$hamrock said:

Also, if you watch reeeeaaaal closely the first few moments of the duel between Kenobi and Grievous on Utapau in Episode III, you can see Kenobi using his hands to deflect some of the rapid attacks from Grievous's four lightsabers. As $hamrock said, though, this is probably a Force power at work. In D6 it was called Absorb/Dissipate Energy. In Saga I think it was called Negate Energy.

I am going to stick this here to avoid derailing another thread.

GoblynByte said:

Players tend to hate running away. You can Ken Hite and Robin Laws talk about it on their podcast http://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-1-vampires-are-a-holes/ (at about 8m20s). They suggest the way to get around this is to get the PCs to use a character ability to determine that the characters are outmatched and should make a run for it, as this makes it a victory to notice that there is no victory to be had in the scene.

I am not entirely convinced I believe them, as it still seems like the GM railroading the players in to doing what he wants ('In this scene you run away!' 'But I don't want to run away!'), but it is a start.

And if by some miracle you convince your players that being cowards and making a run for it is the cool thing to do, you then need to make the act of running away fun in an of itself.

(I kinda get the impression that the one piece of military history gamers pick up on is that most casualties happen in the rout and it is usually safer to stay and fight than try to run away)

In short, I don't think making the combat system deliberately unappealing to use is the way to stop players trying to kill everything. It will only make them bitter and rob you of satisfying combat in those circumstances where you DO want them to stand and fight.

AluminiumWolf said:

So your plan to keep from derailing another thread is to bring points from another to continue to derail this one?

Players do frigging hate running away though. If it was something they enjoyed, you wouldn't need to specially design the combat system to try to bully them in to it, now would you.

AluminiumWolf said:

"Deliberately unappealing"? Exactly what conversation are you having? That's YOUR opinion of a system of that style, not mine, certainly not anyone I've ever gamed with, and (from what I'm reading) not the majority of the folks posting here. What you label "unappealing," others would label exciting, colaborative, and preferable.

I once ran a poll on a local Yahoo group regarding their preferred lethality in an RPG. 200+ people voted and an overwhelming 79% voted for some variation on letting the GM fudge things on occasion to make things more exciting. Only 11% voted for "Let the dice fall where they may." So, in fact, your assessment that "most people" want a game that is a competition between the GM and players is incorrect.

And the exact point I was trying to make is that you make the chase as exciting as the stand-up fight. Why else would you do it?

AluminiumWolf said:

The system isn't specifically designed to bully them. It's design to make scenes dramatic. Chases are dramatic. You can't have chases if someone doesn't run away on occasion.