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Difficulty of Parrying a Blaster Bolt
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Naaman
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 21, 2019 1:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

garhkal wrote:


That's more like it. So the chart would be
Moderate - one arc (in front)
Difficult - 2 arcs (front and one side)
Very Difficult - 3 arcs (front and both sides)
Heroic - All 4 arcs (front, sides and rear)..


"Very Difficult - 3 arcs (front and both sides)"
Suppose the Jedi does this, and eliminates the shooter in the front arc, leaving only two shooters (left and right). Does this make his life easier, harder, or have no impact?

For simplicity's sake, you could rule that shooters on opposite sides force the character to operate similarly to if he is attacked on three sides.

In any case, I might change the wording from "front and both sides" to "any three sides" since the character's feet aren't glued in place (by turning 90 degrees as part of his reaction, he can change "front, left and rear" into "left, front, and right").
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Naaman
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 21, 2019 1:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

One thing I'd like to point out here:

We go to a lot of effort to "make realistic" the rules.

But in reality, if you're being shot at from opposite sides, the best thing you can do is get out of the way: then your enemies will shoot each other.

It's easy to lose track of the idea that a missed blaster shot is still deadly: it's just not damaging the intended target.

If shooters are going to "tactics" the Jedi to death, they need to be held to similarly "realistic" standards. Flanking a Jedi on opposite sides puts them at risk of hitting each other with any stray shots (especially if we're talking about auto-fire weapons or otherwise bombarding the Jedi with "overwhelming" firepower). It becomes in your ally's best interest for the Jedi to deflect all of your shots (and in your best interest for all of your ally's shots to be successfully blocked), which kind of defeats the purpose of shooting at the Jedi in the first place....
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atgxtg
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PostPosted: Fri May 24, 2019 3:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

garhkal wrote:


That's more like it. So the chart would be
Moderate - one arc (in front)
Difficult - 2 arcs (front and one side)
Very Difficult - 3 arcs (front and both sides)
Heroic - All 4 arcs (front, sides and rear)..


The problem with this is that the base difficulty to wield a lightsaber effectively is already Difficult. So shouldn't the difficulty here start off higher? At least Difficult, if not higher?
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atgxtg
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PostPosted: Fri May 24, 2019 4:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Just another thought, but shields have a rating that get added to the soak of the target. So, what if lighsaber parry did something similar, either by adding the lightsaber's damage die to the Jedi's soak total or by subtracting the damage dice from the damage rating of the incoming attack? That way it would become more difficult to successful deflect bigger, more damaging bolts.

After all even Yoda can't deflect the Death Star.
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PostPosted: Fri May 24, 2019 10:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

While I don't necessarily roll it out, I do at least mentally compare the damage rating of the Jedi with lightsaber combat with the damage rating of the incoming attack. Long ago one of my players had their Jedi parry a blaster cannon (either from an AT-AT or an AT-ST). She used a Force Point not to up the parry roll, but to up the control damage bonus so the lightsaber damage was similar in magnitude to that of the walker.
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PostPosted: Sat May 25, 2019 1:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

atgxtg wrote:
Just another thought, but shields have a rating that get added to the soak of the target. So, what if lighsaber parry did something similar, either by adding the lightsaber's damage die to the Jedi's soak total or by subtracting the damage dice from the damage rating of the incoming attack? That way it would become more difficult to successful deflect bigger, more damaging bolts.

After all even Yoda can't deflect the Death Star.


I've seen that sort of rule, used in home games before, for deflecting bolts from higher scales.. Compare their control (minus maps) to the scale bonus of the attack. If their control's higher, it can be blocked, if not, it can't be.

So defending vs say an at-at, which has +4d, means someone AFTER maps must have 5d in control to block it.
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Naaman
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PostPosted: Sat May 25, 2019 4:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

That's not a bad idea.
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atgxtg
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PostPosted: Sat May 25, 2019 8:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

garhkal wrote:


I've seen that sort of rule, used in home games before, for deflecting bolts from higher scales.. Compare their control (minus maps) to the scale bonus of the attack. If their control's higher, it can be blocked, if not, it can't be.

So defending vs say an at-at, which has +4d, means someone AFTER maps must have 5d in control to block it.


I was thinking of keeping it simpler, and on a successful roll the Jedi either adds his modifier lightsaber damage to his soak total, or subtracts his modified lightsaber damage from the incoming damage dice before they are rolled.

Examples, A stormtrooper shoots at a Jedi and the Jedi makes his parry. The blaster rifles do 5D damage, but the Jedi does 8D lightsaber damage, so he can either add 8D to his STR to resist the damage, or subtracts 8D from 5D and so clan block all of the damage.

A AT-AT shoots at a Jedi, successful and the Jedi parries. The AT-AT does 6D, speeder scale, which is 12D in character scale. The Jedi does 10D damage with her lightsaber and so either adds 10D to her STR total to resist the damage , as per shields, or just takes 10D off of the damage total and only has to resist 2D of the blast.

One interesting perk of this method is that it could help simply combined fire against a Jedi. If you added the combined fire bonus to the weapon damage it would allow for a large group of Stromtroopers to overwhelm a Jedi's defenses with lots of blaster shots coming in at the same time. Something like a group of Droideka Destroyers can now become a real threat but multifiring, as they no longer have to worry about beating the Jedi's (incredibly high) parry total but can just overwhelm the Jedi with massed fire.
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PostPosted: Sat May 25, 2019 1:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

atgxtg wrote:
The problem with this is that the base difficulty to wield a lightsaber effectively is already Difficult. So shouldn't the difficulty here start off higher? At least Difficult, if not higher?

Difficult is the base difficulty to use a lightsaber in melee combat. Being able to parry blaster bolts is a separate ability tied to the character's Sense roll, with the gradient based on the number of directions the shots are coming from in a round, plus any combined fire modifiers.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Sat May 25, 2019 2:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Parrying energy blasts of higher scale can get pretty complicated, but I prefer a system that at least allows the Jedi to attempt it. A flat prohibition based on static dice levels circumvents the randomness of the dice, and the ability of characters to selectively boost their dice rolls via CP or FP. IMO, putting absolute prohibitions on characters goes against the spirit of the game; far better to put the Difficulty extremely high and let them try if they like.

A factor which has been addressed before is that the degree of miss will also be a factor. The example of Yoda parrying the Death Star is extreme to the point of being a reductio ad absurdum fallacy, but it does highlight the point I'm trying to make:
    1) In order to attempt to parry a superlaser blast from the Death Star, the blast would have to strike somewhere within a ~2-3 meter radius of the Jedi's location, and the larger a blast gets, the less likely it is that it will do so.

    2) Because of the amount of energy involved, precision accuracy isn't exactly necessary, as blast radius splash effects can be sufficiently lethal to smaller scale targets just by getting "close enough."

IMO, the simplest way to handle this is just to apply the Scale modifier to the difficulty to parry, which represents both the Difficulty of the Jedi successfully being in a location where they can parry and the larger, more energetic nature of the beam itself.

So, sure, Yoda can try to parry the Death Star, but he's looking at a 24D modifier to the Difficulty to do so.
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Last edited by CRMcNeill on Mon May 27, 2019 4:13 pm; edited 1 time in total
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PostPosted: Sat May 25, 2019 5:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Missed this one somehow...

Naaman wrote:
But in reality, if you're being shot at from opposite sides, the best thing you can do is get out of the way: then your enemies will shoot each other.

Not necessarily. Shooters being in opposing arcs does not automatically mean that they are directly opposite each other, and would be shooting at each other if the Jedi were not in the way. Although that might make a fun suggestion for a GM to spice up a combat scene...

That also assumes a two-dimensional battlefield. In at least one instance in the EU (Luke and Mara versus the guard droids in Vision of the Future), where the droids were shooting from balconies above floor level from opposite directions.

It's also noteworthy that the difficulty on parrying attacks from opposing directions simultaneously was too much even for Luke, and that it took a bit of teamwork to get Luke in a position where he could parry both shooters at once, freeing up Mara for a little selective blaster fire.

Quote:
If shooters are going to "tactics" the Jedi to death, they need to be held to similarly "realistic" standards. Flanking a Jedi on opposite sides puts them at risk of hitting each other with any stray shots (especially if we're talking about auto-fire weapons or otherwise bombarding the Jedi with "overwhelming" firepower). It becomes in your ally's best interest for the Jedi to deflect all of your shots (and in your best interest for all of your ally's shots to be successfully blocked), which kind of defeats the purpose of shooting at the Jedi in the first place....

Certainly worth discussing from a rules perspective for GMs to include in their combats. Is this something a Jedi could arrange on a particularly high skill roll, or just something that happens on a wild dice result? This would seem to be an aspect of Sokan and/or TrĂ kata.
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Sun May 26, 2019 12:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

atgxtg wrote:
garhkal wrote:


I've seen that sort of rule, used in home games before, for deflecting bolts from higher scales.. Compare their control (minus maps) to the scale bonus of the attack. If their control's higher, it can be blocked, if not, it can't be.

So defending vs say an at-at, which has +4d, means someone AFTER maps must have 5d in control to block it.


I was thinking of keeping it simpler, and on a successful roll the Jedi either adds his modifier lightsaber damage to his soak total, or subtracts his modified lightsaber damage from the incoming damage dice before they are rolled.

Examples, A stormtrooper shoots at a Jedi and the Jedi makes his parry. The blaster rifles do 5D damage, but the Jedi does 8D lightsaber damage, so he can either add 8D to his STR to resist the damage, or subtracts 8D from 5D and so clan block all of the damage.

A AT-AT shoots at a Jedi, successful and the Jedi parries. The AT-AT does 6D, speeder scale, which is 12D in character scale. The Jedi does 10D damage with her lightsaber and so either adds 10D to her STR total to resist the damage , as per shields, or just takes 10D off of the damage total and only has to resist 2D of the blast.


It does make it easier this way.. BUT that means you'd need at least 12+ folks shooting to overwhelm a jedi who's got 8d in LS parry..
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PostPosted: Sun May 26, 2019 9:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

A quick summation of the different modifiers...
    1) A Jedi with Lightsaber Combat 'up' can parry all the blaster fire from a single fire arc at Easy Difficulty.

    2). The Jedi's skill level is subsequently penalized if they must defend additional fire arcs:
      One Arc: -0D
      Two Adjoining Arcs: -1D
      Two Opposing Arcs (Front/Rear or Left/Right): -2D
      Three Arcs: -3D
      Four Arcs: -4D

      Optionally, this can be treated as multiple actions, with the defense of each arc rolled separately as a standard action for MAP purposes.

    3). A single shooter firing semi-auto weapons may attempt to overload the Jedi's defenses by declaring a barrage attack, firing off as many accurate shots as their skill level permits. This is rolled just like the RAW for lightsaber vs. blaster, but the blaster shooter expends 1 round of ammo for every 3 points by which their Blaster roll exceeded the base Difficulty for their range to the Jedi.

    4). Multiple shooters may coordinate their fire as per the RAW, with the bonuses added to that of the shooter with the highest skill level. Multiple shooters who are not coordinated may also combine their fire, but only receive 50% of the coordination bonus, rounded down.

    5). Any weapon with Auto-Fire dice may add that value to their roll to hit the Jedi.

    6). Shotgun-type weapons firing a spray of pellets also present major difficulties to Jedi, adding an additional 3D to the shooter's Gunnery roll to overcome the Jedi's parry.

    7). Finally, larger-scale weapons apply their scale modifier to the Jedi's Difficulty to parry.

    8 ). In addition, there are several types of weapons (flamethrowers, chem-sprayers, etc) that can't be parried by lightsabers at all.

So, it starts out pretty easy for the Jedi, as their defenses are pretty much immune to 1 or 2 shooters in a single arc, but as the numbers, types and directions of threats increase, so too does the Difficulty of deflecting all the shots.
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PostPosted: Sun May 26, 2019 2:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sounds about right, but i still feel, opposing arcs should be a lot harder to defend than just defending 4 arcs is..
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PostPosted: Sun May 26, 2019 2:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

garhkal wrote:
Sounds about right, but i still feel, opposing arcs should be a lot harder to defend than just defending 4 arcs is..

But that doesn't make any sense; if you are defending all four arcs, you are defending against two sets of opposing arcs simultaneously (front/back and left/right). Why would it be harder to defend one set at a time than it would to defend against two sets at once?

I can see where simple anatomy might make it more difficult for a character to defend their own rear arc (say, in the -1D or -2D range), but there's no logical reason two arcs should be harder to defend than all four.
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