Lightsaber Combat

[Rerun941]

I didn't want to hijack the discussion about what the minimum skills are to be called 'Jedi'

I want to know what everyone's opinion was on the rules for Lightsaber Combat. Specifically, the ability to add your control and sense dice to your lightsaber combat skill. I remember playing with a guy who had even a fairly low-level Force Wielder (around 3-4D in each of his force skills) and it was ridiculous the amount of dice he was rolling when making attacks and dealing out damage (God forbid he spend a force point. )

I just think it's a little unbalancing. 'Normals' can only improve the damage of a weapon by 1D+2. Perhaps the ability to add Control dice to your damage roll should be limited to +2D? Even melee weapons have max damage listed. (I think a Force Pike's max is 7D+2?)

Don't get me wrong, the lightsaber should be a powerful weapon and in the hands of an expert it should be deadly, but isn't rolling 10-12D for damage a bit ridiculous?

Ok, I'm rambling now and I'll shup up.

Rerun941
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Luke - "Same as always."
Han - "That bad, huh?"

[Orgaloth]

I'm not positive on this, but wouldn't die penalties come into play for having Lightsaber Combat active? Thus the shouldn't the control dice for added damage go down the appropiate number?

As I said I'm not positive (my book is currently on loan).
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Du Cass' Dream

[Grimace]

From what I remember, and I can't remember if it's the rules from the book, or the house rules I use, Sense is added to your Lightsaber skill when rolling to hit or to parry. Control is used to add or subtract from your Lightsaber damage (typically 5D). Both of those would suffer -1D automatically because you're "keeping up" the Lightsaber Combat power.

So you get a Jedi with 3D in Control, 4D in Sense, and 5D in Lightsaber skill. He manages to activate his Lightsaber Combat power. The power is kept up. He gets into combat. To hit with his lightsaber, he rolls his 5D Lightsaber skill, adds 4D for Sense, subtracts 1D for keeping the power up (one action) and any additional die for multiple attacks or actions. Say he wants to make two attacks. That would be a total of 3 actions, or -2D total. So 9D minus 2D equals 7D to hit with both rolls. When he hits, he has the option of using his Control of 3D to increase or decrease the damage. This time he wants to do damage, so he increases. So for damage, he'll roll 8D damage.

Say he was going against a person, and didn't want to dismember them. He could decide to subtract damage, so instead of doing 5D damage with the saber, he would only do 2D damage. Wounding or stunning hits only.

[Gry Sarth]

Actually, keeping the Lightsaber Combat power up counts as 2 actions in itself, since you're keeping both Control and Sense up. So a single attack in a round, made with Lightsaber Combat, will suffer a -2D penalty. The damage will also suffer a -2D penalty, but of course not going below the saber's normal damage.

So that means that Lightsaber Combat only starts to be effective when the Jedi has Control and Sense at 2D+1, which kinda makes sense, and creates a good delay until a Jedi starts wreaking havoc.

[cheshire]

I have to keep reminding the members of my group that they add their control to their lightsaber damage -2D. It's in the rulebook.