Naaman
Vice Admiral
Joined: 29 Jul 2011
Posts: 3191
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 Posted: Sat Aug 08, 2015 9:05 pm Post subject: |
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Hey man, do what works for ya. It seems that a campaign set in the Old Republic or TotJ would suffer horribly from this type of treatment. But if you are playing rebellion era, its totally appropriate.
Also, more mature payers will not abuse the rules, and mechanical "balance" isnt really an issue.
Anyway, Jedi are the only reason I like Star Wars, so i you have a player like me, he might feel that his character concept is stifled by the harshness of the house rule. As a player, I can say that its quite frustrating when a gm makes a specific effort to nerf a character's abilities, especially when the character concept depends on presuppositions based on, say, what we see in the films.
ObiWan and Anakin as padawans had no problem taking on half a dozen battle droids at once. ObiWan even had a decent solo run against Darth Maul, a bona fide Sith Lord. Plot armor notwithstanding, the PCs are to the campaign what ObiWan, Luke and Han are to the films, so it seems appropriate to use the characters from the films (especially ObiWan, since there is nothing "special" about him...i.e. he is not the chosen one or the descendant thereof) as a reference for what PCs of a similar level can do.
| tetsuoh wrote: | | Naaman wrote: | | tetsuoh wrote: | We house ruled that LSC adds only 1/3 of their force skill dice to their totals - this means the lightsaber isnt as effective overall - but still generally a good weapon and devastating in the hands of a master.
We leave the difficulty - the weapon is hard to use as you have no weight as a guiding factor.
This mean students tend to have a hard time with the weapon until they are well versed in it.
However we allow form training - which are our specializations of lightsaber but only allow their totals to be used on the manuevers used in those forms.
It complicates things but adds more of a martial element to the idea of the lightsaber. |
Adding fewer (but proportionate) amounts of dice is a clean, simple way to balance out the higher levels of play. But it would totally nuter the younger Jedi. Have you made the power easier to activate/use (do you still apply MAPs, for example)? |
No but that is the point - you shouldnt expect a young jedi to be able to activate LSC and their weapon and swing all in one round - they should have a good chance to fail at this - that is what learning is all about - failure. and since they would need to roll a 6 or lower to hurt themselves - something that generally wont happen on the avergae of 3-4D (its still not even the average of 2D actually) that isnt even the biggest problem - the problem is them getting their LSC going (if they benefit from it, which you can and do benefit from only one of the skills if you have it at 3d and not the other in our games.) - which is incentive to try to learn to become more in tune with the force.
But the fact that lightsabers are hard in our games is a given - as such most "young" jedi in our games either train delegantly to learn how to control their lightsabers - often choosing a specialization form early on in order to focus on one discipline and slowly raise the base skill - or they focus on their force skills and concern themselves with lightsaber combat every now and then.
this is the difference between a fighter jedi and a traditional diplomatic jedi in our games. the ones who focus on lightsaber often fall short on force skills early on and tend to fall to the darkside because of concern with combat. The one who focus on force skills tend to gain a better grasp of their connection to the force and tend to fall to the darrk side from their overwhelming use of the force.
Believe it or not - the force users in my campaigns who tend to succeed the best at being jedi are the ones who aren't concerned with how high their skills are - they often tend to lvl other skills more often than force skills and lightsaber skills sure they will train in force use but they do so more often in real world skills that would be of benefit to their role in the group, which can be next to anything - and they often try to gain force powers (if they are allowed to pick instead of their master - but masters are often insightful and can read the path a young jedi will be prone to.) that will accentuate that role.
If your problem is how well a "young" jedi can wield a lightsaber in D6 - then I think your focusing on combat too much.
The normal lightsaber combat power is broken - adds control/sense - well while they need a 16 - the to hit is replaced by the opponents dodge or by parry if the opponent attempts to do that - and will often be the result of a roll of 4d or less if they aren't attacking a major bad guy - 4d average is 12. The average lightsaber skill by template of a young jedi is none - young jedi don't have it - whats more they dont even have a lightsaber - because they arent ready for one.
The minor jedi template gets one but they only have a control of 1D - they cant even have lsc - so if your wanting to be good with that lightsaber I suggest the max 2D in your lightsaber skill if your not wanting to hurt yourself with it if your playing that template. And if you read the description - you know why - they lost their master. The lightsaber shouldnt be in their hands yet.
Humans base is 2D for a Stat - if you have 1D in each your probably not gonna activate LSC anyway but if you put 2D in the lightsaber skill like you can - thats 5D - the average your looking for - which gives you a 50/50 shot at succeeding. Even better if you take more Attribute dice and give yourself another in each of control and sense.
In our games a force student isnt ready for their lightsaber until they have 3 in control and sense - and arent ready to be a knight until they have 4 in both and lightsaber and at least 1 in alter.
And lsc doesn't - and in a padawans case - shouldn't - need to be activated the same round they need to fight.
If you don't give your group time to pull their weapons and prepare to fight by giving them a couple rounds - my questions is - why is your group constantly being ambushed?
EDIT: also not to be a prude on this but the concentration topic reminded me - we often see and encourage concentration use in preparation of combat - this is generally used to activate LSC by padawans in our game.
"Breath - distance yourself from the sounds of the battle - concentrate on the force flowing through you......... Prepare yourself - here they come!" |
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