TROS Star Wars

[Mike Holmes]

Michael, what do you mean by spend? Why half? Otherwise I'm liking it a lot.

BTW, damage ratings for lightsabres? I'd call it like 20 or so? Yes, this means no grazes ever occur. Have you ever seen somebody grazed by a lightsaber? Nope, body parts just come off. Basically it's just a question of what gets hit.

I see lightsabre duels having loads of dice spent on defense. Which should work to create the longish duels from the movies. It looks offensive, but it's really not. Er whatever.

Make sense?

Mike

[Jake Norwood]

Just want to chime in and say I like where the Dark Side thing is going. Great stuff.

Jake

[Shadeling]

Michael, what do you mean by spend? Why half? Otherwise I'm liking it a lot.

BTW, damage ratings for lightsabres? I'd call it like 20 or so? Yes, this means no grazes ever occur. Have you ever seen somebody grazed by a lightsaber? Nope, body parts just come off. Basically it's just a question of what gets hit.

I see lightsabre duels having loads of dice spent on defense. Which should work to create the longish duels from the movies. It looks offensive, but it's really not. Er whatever.

Make sense?

Mike

20 DR for a lightsabre! They are cool and all, but there are things they even have difficulty cutting through. Perhaps ST+5, or 6 or even more. Maybe bonus vs armors even.

[Mike Holmes]

"They'll never get through those blast doors"

"They're coming through!!!"

I think that the DR should be high enough that human tougness should never matter. Even big alien tougness (like the one that lost it's arm in episode 4), shouldn't be enough. Also enough that tacking on ST should be like an afterthought. Basically I can see a ST 1 tiny alien slicing Chewbacca in half with a light sabre.

Mike

[Shadeling]

"They'll never get through those blast doors"

"They're coming through!!!"

I think that the DR should be high enough that human tougness should never matter. Even big alien tougness (like the one that lost it's arm in episode 4), shouldn't be enough. Also enough that tacking on ST should be like an afterthought. Basically I can see a ST 1 tiny alien slicing Chewbacca in half with a light sabre.

Mike

Qui Gon Jin (sp?) was having difficulty getting through the doors-almost struggling. ST is somewhat a factor-Jedi have Lightsabres built for their size-hence why Yoda's is tiny compared to Mace Windu's.

[Valamir]

Its not that hard to back into.  A Jedi should be able to slice a person even in armor in half with little effort.

Above average TO: 5
Nice solid armor: call it 6.

So Damage minus the above 11 should still regularly yield level 4 and 5 wounds...meaning add another 5.

So we basically need a hit which regular dishes 16 points of damage.  Figure strength of 4 (none of the Jedi were very Herculean, but all were pretty fit) and 1-2 successes.  The light sabre needs to have Strength +10 damage.

4STR + 10 DAM + 1 or 2 Successes - 5 TO and 6 Armor and you have a level 4 or 5 wound.

Voila!!.  One could even say that 0 successes on an attack would automatically give a level 1 wound from being burned by a near miss.

On the other hand one might want a wider range of possible results for gaming purposes.  After all, while all light sabre duels in the movies pretty much ended in 1 hit equals 1 chopped off body part we were only shown the particularly dramatic duels.

So a light saber might do things a little differently.  Perhaps its STR + 3x successes.  That way a single success with a light sabre does the same damage as a STR+3 Great Sword.  But on a roll with 4 successes you're dishing out 16 damage instead of 7.

I prefer the second method myself.

[Stephen]

I wouldn't add a STR bonus to lightsabres at all, myself.  Those things do almost exactly the same damage whether swung with casual slowness or full-muscle speed, and if you can lift it enough to make contact at all with your enemy, it doesn't matter that you can't lift two of them.

I would suggest having them do a base DR 2 plus 3x MoS in damage levels.  Thus you hit by 1, DR 5; hit by 2, DR 8; hit by 3, DR 11; hit by 4, DR 14; hit by 5, DR 17; hit by 6, DR 20....  Variation from nick to deadliness, but within a very narrow range.

Alternately, for a much simpler way of handling it, just indicate that neither TO NOR AV, no matter how high either is, applies to lightsabre damage....

[szilard]

Alternately, for a much simpler way of handling it, just indicate that neither TO NOR AV, no matter how high either is, applies to lightsabre damage....

I was thinking of that, but obviously(?) a giant thing would be able to take a couple of lightsabre swipes.

Maybe ignore armor... and halve toughness - and keep the normal damage in the range of a sword?

Stuart

[Mike Holmes]

Good point about struggling through the blast doors. Still, I'd say that was a lot of armor rating meaning that max damage needs to be pretty good. I like Ralphs solution. But simpler, just say that all damage is just doubled including that from ST (instead of just tripling the successes). This also covers the idea of halving armor effectiveness.

Then the DR can be based on the size of the weapon as suggested (and other modifiers can be adjusted for the different weapons as well such as TNs).

Call it the Rolemaster solution - this is much like how force swords worked in that system.

Mike

[Matt Wilson]

Hey, just a quick note. In the duel in ESB luke hits Vader in the shoulder during their duel, and Vader makes some sort of "aargh" noise, but he's otherwise okay.

So does Vader have off-the-chart armor on?

Blasters, btw, would have to be powerful enough to make stormtrooper armor pointless, unless it turns out that Imperial budget cuts have resulted in ST armor actually being plastic and used only for intimidation value.

[Mike Holmes]

Vader probably does have off the chart armor. Why not? If we can have lightsabres why can't we have armor that can stop it. Remember that, thematically, he's the black knight, invulnerable.

Or, that was a near miss, narrated as a blow that glanced off his armor.

Probably both. Either works for me.

BTW, I was thinking about the Force. It should be a positive SA. But at any point, the player can convert it all to Dark Side Force (TM), and in doing so double the dice (even if that means going higher than five). Then the downside is, as above, that you can't use your other SAs.

Thus you have the temptation to the Dark Side. The GM should only allow the character to convert back if he thinks that the character has had a powerfully redemptive episode.

Or maybe two SAs one for each side with the higher being in control? Hmmm. Lots' of options.

Think of The Force as a special Faith that helps the character to do pretty much anything he believes he can.

Mike

[Michael Tree]

Michael, what do you mean by spend? Why half? Otherwise I'm liking it a lot.

BTW, damage ratings for lightsabres? I'd call it like 20 or so? Yes, this means no grazes ever occur. Have you ever seen somebody grazed by a lightsaber? Nope, body parts just come off. Basically it's just a question of what gets hit.

By spend, I meant permanently expending SA points to improve attributes, proficiencies, and so on.  I suggested limiting it to half because a) once a person has begun falling to the dark side, it's difficult to return to the light, so it shouldn't be easy or quick to change the dark side SA to zero, and b) it makes using the dark side more of a penalty in the long run, making advancement slower.

As for lightsaber damage, we have actually seen people grazed by a lightsaber.  In Empire Luke hit Vader but it was deflected by his armor, and in Episode II Obi Wan was cut on the leg.

[RN3G8 4E]

I like this thread... :)

Just thought I should mention, in the recent "Jedi Knight II: Outcast" game there is mentioned a metal that resists light sabers. Probably Darth's armor was made of it. It's rare but it exists. Just though I'd throw that into this mix. Treat it like mithril or something- very rare, very fine, and very tough.

[Shadeling]

I like this thread... :)

Just thought I should mention, in the recent "Jedi Knight II: Outcast" game there is mentioned a metal that resists light sabers. Probably Darth's armor was made of it. It's rare but it exists. Just though I'd throw that into this mix. Treat it like mithril or something- very rare, very fine, and very tough.

Of course Vader could be using the Force to shield himself too.

[Bob Richter]

In my own Riddle of The Force, lightsabres simply dealt damage = level of success, regardless of armor, ST, TO, or anything else. This made them awfully potent, in the hands of a skilled user.

So if I swung with 15 dice, and Darth Baddie blocked with 10, and we rolled average numbers of successes, I would have 8 to his 5, and inflict a level 3 wound. Not perfect, but it seemed to work.