Difficulty of Parrying a Blaster Bolt

[Naaman]

[CRMcNeill]

Giving this a bump w/r/t what garhkal posted here

I've already noted in this topic how I apply Scale modifiers to the Jedi's Difficulty to block the shot with a Lightsaber, but one thing I'm not sure I've ever addressed was whether or not the shot got close enough to the Jedi to be parried with a saber in the first place. After all, a one-meter energy blade can only reach so far, and no parry should be possible if the blast is too far away for the Jedi.

Now, under the RAW, this really isn't an issue, as a beam that doesn't hit has no effect. However, if one is using some sort of splash damage rule, it becomes increasingly likely that an energy beam can strike an object too far away for the Jedi to parry, but close enough to inflict splash damage by catching the Jedi in the blast radius.

My initial thought is to base it on Difficulty; if the shot misses the Jedi by 10 or more, it's too far away for the Jedi to parry.

Thoughts?
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[Naaman]

Incidentally, this issue also exists in d20.

When you introduce a "margin of error" factor to determine whether or not something can be parried, you run into this problem:

Mathematically, EVERY shot ever fired at Yoda, Luke, Vader, etc, will always miss by "too much" to be parried. Essentially, the better the Jedi gets, the less often shots will come close enough to be parried.

In d20 it was the opposite problem. Their rule was shots that only shots that miss by 5 or less can be aimed back at a target. This created the issue that, the better the Jedi gets at blocking the shot, the less chance he'll have of redirecting it.

I'd recommend basing it on the weapon's inherent difficulty. If the attack roll fails because the roll was too low to use the weapon properly, then the shot is "too far away" to be parried.

If scale modifiers apply (this, to me, means that not only the relative size is scaled, but also the distance between shooter and target are scaled), then the scale dice can count against the attack roll (bigger shooting smaller), but not for it. This would represent that, up close, small distances between the point of impact and the target are magnified as the shot travels along it's vector so that at hundreds of meters away, a shot is dozens of meters off target (for a miss).

So, if a shot misses it's inherent difficulty by a very small margin, then the Jedi may take splash damage (which should be, IMO scaled down to character scale, and present a small risk of actual injury, since we are talking about a missed attack, here. For reference, the "kill radius" on a frag grenade is 3-5 meters. I'd think think that splash damage should probably have a danger radius of about 1 to 2 meters and should probably top out around 4D, depending on what is "splashing").
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SpecForce Combat Elements
All About Lightsabers: Designing, Building, and Fighting

[CRMcNeill]

I've already addressed this problem earlier in this topic. Basically, a Jedi who chooses to block attacks with his saber is considered a stationary target for the purposes of the attacker's Blaster Difficulty. An attacker just has to roll higher than the Base Difficulty for the weapon at that range (modified by Scale).

So, w/r/t the more recent post, an attack that misses the Jedi by more than X amount is also too far away for him to block with his lightsaber. In the case of, say, a cap-ship turbolaser, this can be particularly problematic, as a Scale Difference of +12D is almost guaranteed to miss the Jedi by more than +10, but if it hits the ground anywhere nearby, the Jedi may very likely still take splash damage that his lightsaber can't defend against.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[Mamatried]

If you have an "epic" fail then what.

If we look to the reveng of the sith we see several jedi defending (eventually failing) to defend agains the clone troopers. Multiple attackers and most likely each using some form of autofire, would be be unresonable to say that an big enough fail also will incure multiple hits when we deal with autofire?

[CRMcNeill]

[Mamatried]

fail by 20 or more i consider an epic fail.

rolling a 10 on a heroic check for example

[CRMcNeill]

[Mamatried]

of his lightsaber combat check

so if he fails he can not use his lightsaber combart at all to block/parry
and his skill in lightsaber (dex based) will have the difficulty, if he fails this too
he then takes damage from BOTH scources.

after all a jedi that has has to have fairly high Sense and Control to even attempt it, someone with 3D in both IMO would not be able to maybe against some stray unaimed shot.

and with the jedi being puny by nature (3D skill at a cost of 3D attribute)
makes it IMO impossible to even try defens against a blaster bolt unlesss you have 4-5D in each sense and control, though that renders the jedi incapable of anything else than be "good at deflection"

[CRMcNeill]