GoblynByte said:

GoblynByte said:

The swtor trailer is probably a Force power, yes. Same as Yoda uses in episode 2, only used against a lightsaber. But speaking of those trailers, the first swtor trailer with the duel in the temple is another excellent example of how lightsaber duelling works.

Northman said:

And Saga used strength in lightsaber damage calculation (dex also, with the right feat) so there's evidence for that as well.

Come to think of it, is there some sort of mechanic in EotE wherein lightsabers ignore soak from armor or anything like that? I can't recall seeing it. I'm not saying it is needed, but previous iterations did have lightsabers ignoring damage resistance from armor due to the blade's ability to cut through anything like a knife through butter. I have mixed feelings about that sort of thing since we do see examples of a lightsaber meeting with resistance against physical objects. It'll cut through anything given time, but there's rarely such time in combat.

+++++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.+++++

Just out of interest, do you have much experience of systems you CAN use without much fudging?

It was Herowars/ (Glorantha) Heroquest for me, but anything with up front stake setting will probably work.

So before the dice are thrown, you agree what the results will mean, and stick by them.

It lets you set conditions you will actually accept ('If you win the roll you shoot the Stormtroopers and rescue the princess. If I win the roll they drive you off and the princess is executed', rather than 'If you win the roll you shoot the Stormtroopers and rescue the princess. If I win the roll they blow your heads off' (and then fudging it if they roll the 'they blow your heads off' result))

You may find the result… Compelling. I know I did!

+++++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?+++++

I tend to read the subtext as 'Enjoying the fighting is something filthy wargamers and video gamers do. Real Roleplayers are better than that!'

AluminiumWolf said:

Yes. All of them can be used that way!! And, as I said before, I don't hate that style of play. It has a time and place. I've run with a more adversarial style many times. But if I'm going for a more story-driven, dramatic style, I find that mode doesn't work quite as well.

AluminiumWolf said:

How… in… the… WORLD do you get that from stating that chases should be as exciting as a stand-up fight? No where in my post (this or any other) did I imply anything like that. You created that subtext, not me.

GoblynByte said:

I don't think that part is adversarial as such, as you can ensure that all outcomes lead in directions that at least SEEM to make the story interesting. Actually having to live with the consequences of the Princess getting executed because you couldn't save her is at least potentially interesting (maybe you don't have this problem, but I have found I have failed to save a lot more princesses since I discovered low fudge systems, because it makes failure states other than 'The PCs get killed' easier to acheive).

But when it comes to a game, I do find they work best if everyone understands the rules and is trying to win. Otherwise it is like a game where you are trying to let someone win even though they suck at it, which I don't find a compelling experience. You are not tested and they can usually tell you are holding back.

It is the goal of marrying these two elements that I am getting at.

GoblynByte said:

GoblynByte said:

True, but armor consists of rather thin materials compared to a blast door so I suppose that weights up for the time factor. Unless it's Cortosis or something similar involved, but that's even morr rare than a lightsaber, so… Also, Luke doesn't use much time cutting that AT-AT open and toss in those charges.

I bring attention to something I said earlier.

GoblynByte said:

Part of my point was that I find combat just as important to the whole process as any other aspect of the system. I don't find it "filthy" or something that only video gamers enjoy. I love combat scenes. They are exciting moments of climactic, explosive resolution. But I also think combat should be just as open to role-playing as the rest of the system. It is, after all, a roleplaying game.

Northman said:

Yeah, and now that I look, they emulate that in the system. It has the Breach 1 quality which ignores 1 points of armor … which means it ignores 10 points of soak!!! Holy crap!!! Go FFG!!!!!

(Luke cut open a clasp to a small hatch which then slid open. He wasn't cutting through the AT-AT's hull.)

Northman said:

The big example is the bit with the door at the beginning of The Phantom Menace, which isn't instantaneous:-

As an image I prefer if lightsabers will cut through anything physical with no resistance, but it isn't like that can't cause story or gameplay problems.

AluminiumWolf said:

You make the assumption that I'm fudging every roll that hits the table. Not true. Somewhere back there I even stated that the act of fudging is pretty rare (if the system is designed correctly). But the "expectation" of how things should come out should come from the source material first and the dice second. People play licensed RPGs to feel like they're in the source material. Not playing a game. Sometimes the dice create a good emulation. Sometimes they don't. And when they don't it is the job of the GM to clip those results in order to meet the players' expectations of how the genre should play out. This does NOT mean micromanaging every result or never allowing anything bad to happen. I let bad things happen quite often. But, on occasion, there's a roll that simply creates a stupid and unmanageable result… and I fudge it. Usually the players aren't even the wiser.

Most Star Wars RPGs are designed to emulate the movies, not video games and not wargames. That creates the expectations of the players before they ever pick up the book. As such, the system should allow you to get results that are similar to the movies.

AluminiumWolf said:

Yes, that was Nortman's point: Blastdoors and hulls should take time, but armor is much thinner and should not offer up much resistance. My point was that Luke was not cutting through the hull, he was cutting through the comparably small latching mechanism on the hatch and that's why he could do it so quickly.

With the Breach quality, that's how lightsabers will play out.

GoblynByte said:

I would argue that if that is the desired goal, you need to be looking at things like pacing, theme and narrative causality http://wiki.lspace.org/wiki/Narrative_Causality http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheoryOfNarrativeCausality rather than how much damage a blaster 'realistically' does.

Your source should be TV Tropes, not… Physics!

The games are just trying to develop a set of rules that let things play out kinda like it does in the movies when the story is interractive rather than determined in advance. I think video games with regenerating health give you a better feeling of being in a movie gunfight than games with a 'realistic' damage model, for instance.

I guess in the end, we know from the movies that the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1, but I wouldn't suggest trying build the rules for navigating asteroid fields around that.

AluminiumWolf said:

Dude. I went to film school. I'm well aware of such concepts. There is no conflict in the physics of such things and the ability to manage them in dramatic situations.

Hey GoblynByte,
I applaud your efforts, but seriously, just leave AluminumWolf alone. He's long since proven immune to reasoned arguments that run counter to his preconceived notions about what a table-top RPG should be.

GoblynByte said:

GoblynByte said:

Yeah, I put that in my original post when I started this thread, before it devolved into discussion of video games combat thanks to AluminiumWolf.

Breach is an awesome quality, it eats soak rather than armor, so it will eat your Brawn, too

GoblynByte said:

Ah well, I did a proper degree with maths and everything, so I know what reality looks like. And it isn't Star Wars!

:-)

Donovan Morningfire said:

I know, I know. I've "walked away" several times already, but I have a neurotic disability.

Okay, washing my hands of it. As I said several days ago, AluminiumWolf, you and I have stated our points many times over and we obviously have very different views about what RPGs should be. Have fun playing EotE.

Wulfherr said:

To be fair, it wasn't just his fault. I fed into it. My apologies.

I think all of the qualities applied to the lightsaber are extremely appropriate. The last session we ran we had trouble remembering those qualities were there, but they're vital to getting the lightsaber to play right. So I'll have to make sure we don't skip them.

No worries !

Oh, I should clarify that we didn't actually use a lightsaber in our last session. We were forgetting the qualities of all weapons. Not those specific to the lightsaber.

GoblynByte said:

I think all of the qualities applied to the lightsaber are extremely appropriate. The last session we ran we had trouble remembering those qualities were there, but they're vital to getting the lightsaber to play right. So I'll have to make sure we don't skip them.

While I fully agree that lightsabers are awesome, on some level I do have a misgiving about them getting an automatic bonus to ranged defense based on the Deflection Quality.

To me, the ability to deflect blaster fire isn't so much a quality of the weapon but of the Jedi wielding it, something they've learned to do as a mix of their training and own Force-enhanced reflexes to take advantage of the lightsaber's unique properties.

I'm okay with the Defensive quality being there, as most people are either intimidated by a lightsaber-wielding foe, or are savvy enough to be wary of anyone that's openly brandishing a lightsaber given their near-mythical connection with the Jedi Order.

As for the damage, while the flat value is nice and does tie back to the WEG version, which also had a flat damage value but could be boosted to ungodly levels of damage by an experienced Jedi character with the lightsaber combat power, I'm wondering if maybe the damage could be reduced (thinking maybe a 6, possibly a 7) and a caveat added that you can apply either your Brawn or Agility to the damage total. While the OT went largely the Kendo route for how they were used, the Prequels did open up the notion of speed-based duelists such as Yoda, who probably had the strength of a small child in most instances but was in-universe considered to be one of the best duelists in the Order (Windu being a very close second simply due to lack of experience in comparison). Now while this would result in the lightsaber doing less raw damage, the fact it has Vicious 2, crits on a single Advantage, and blows right though most being's Soak value still keeps it deadly. Going by the rules on minions and henchmen, dealing a critical hit pretty much takes them out, and thanks to Breach you're pretty much guaranteed to deal the required one point of damage to be eligible to score a critical hit.

As for lightsaber dueling, I'm of the same mindset as Nick Gilliard, in that it's chess at 100 mph and every move is potentially checkmate. The Sense Power's upgrades to upgrade the difficulty of incoming attacks reflects a Jedi's ability to dodge/parry/avoid incoming lightsaber strikes quite nicely I think.

Donovan Morningfire said:

To that point, how many lightsaber duels ended when the opponent was killed? They usually ended in a checkmate move, then the winner gloated. Only then did a finishing move get applied. Hmmm… I think this can be played well, though, with the existing system. A triumph can be used to put one person in a touchy situation and they'll have to psych the other guy out (Cool check, maybe Coerce) to distract him long enough to get out of that checkmate stance. Veeeeerrrry interesting!!

Donovan Morningfire said:

I agree.