Jediphile

Orlando Bloom as Disciple - he's got fangirl potential all over him to begin with and is enough pretty boy for guys to hate

Hmm, come to think of it, Canderous' comment could also be one of disapproval, sort of implying that there hasn't be a "real" Mandalore since Mandalore the Ultimate. Maybe there was a Mandalore since then that he didn't like, perhaps because he came from a competing clan or because he failed to lead properly in Canderous' eyes - the Mandalorians were beated by a bunch of righteous jedi, after all, which is probably not something Canderous likes remembering, in which case you blame your leaders... Well, another possible interpretation, I think. Besides, he might have felt justified in voicing dismissal only after taking the position of Mandalore for himself...

Perhaps, but if you look at the official maps, you'll note that worlds like Korriban, Yavin IV, Ossus, Nar Shaddaa, Sullust and Eriadu are also pretty far away from the core, which doesn't exactly suggest that Dagobah would have been unknown by the Republic at the time. In fact, Dagobah is only slightly further away from the core than Eriadu and Sullust, which are well established worlds in KotOR's era, and it actually seems to be to be closer than Yavin IV, Dantooine, or Korriban, which we have all visited in these games... Actually I wouldn't - I couldn't risk losing that jedi if she was discovered or, even worse, that she turned and joined the Sith against the order. Sure I'd want to convert Sith into Jedi, but at what price and what risk? Among the Sith she's even likely to be killed even if she isn't discovered if it suits the interests of some Sith opportunist...

The only thing you could say is "tied" to the KotOR era of Star Wars are the various "Tales of the Jedi" comic books published by Dark Horse, which all take place some 40-50 years before KotOR1 (except the books dealing with Naga Sadow and the Sith Empire, which go back a thousand years before that). None of them are particularly relevant to KotOR except as background, however. For example, you do hear of characters like Naga Sadow, Freedon Nadd, Ulic Qel-Droma, Exar Kun, and Vima Sunrider during the KotOR games, but you really don't need to explore them further unless you're interested in those characters. Still, KotOR games are obviously inspired by those stories on many occasions. The Mandalorian assault on Dxun/Onderon mentioned in KotOR2, for example, takes place toward the end of the Sith War comic books... It's all way before the time of Revan and Malak, however, so it's not important. Seems that Star Wars Tales (an comic book anthology of short stories) had a story about Visas Marr in issue 24 recently, though, but I haven't seen that. Take a look around the site of Dark Horse comics if you're interested. You can find the info on the original Tales of the Jedi series that started it all here - don't mistake the "Knights of the Old Republic" TPB there for being related to the games, though - it's simply just a collection of the five comic books on the site, which they gave that title (and long before KotOR1 was made, which tells us where that title came from...)

Actually, when you switch class, you begin as level 0 in the new class and then level up from there. The level 0 doesn't count as an actual level, however (no hp, no force powers, etc.) - it just states that you've ceased to be the old consular/sentinel/guardian that you were before and nothing more. You do immediately get a level-up so that you can take level 1 in the new prestige class, though, and that does count as an actual level. And as Battlewookiee said, you can add those levels together (your level in your original class and your level in the new prestige class) for your current total level. Also, you don't actually have to take the prestige class when you hit level 15. You can continue to take more levels in the old class, though I'm not certain how many (I'd assume you can't take more than 20, but I really don't know). It's just a good idea to switch on the spot, however.

Hmmm, I don't know about a Sith academy on Dagobah, particularly not when it's location seems to serve no particular purpose in the plot. The plot really wouldn't play out any differently if you just placed the academy on Korriban, which is already established as a site for a Sith academy in KotOR, and besides, the Sith academy doesn't seem to serve much purpose either, given that you leave it almost immediately. I'm also doubtful of Revan's entry. The whole point of K2 was that he/she was in the unknown regions fighting the true Sith, so I'd be more inclined to say that that's where we should find him/her if at all. You also manage to make the jedi seem like an invasion force assaulting the Sith as they peacefully go about teaching their students. That just seems wrong, somehow. I'd much rather have it the other way around - a jedi academy attacked by the Sith. Also, if there enough jedi to assault the academy and even have a spy on the inside, then that kind of undermines the point of K2 that the jedi were very close to having been completely wiped out. The jedi order might have recovered in time, but since you place the beginning of the story right at the end of K2, it does seem to conflict with that point of K2 and so take away from the severity of it. Anyway, my two credits...

Hmm, actually sounds rather a lot like the mechanic I had in mind for my own system... And I didn't even know SLA Industries. Great minds think alike, I guess " :cool:

Yeah, good point... I confess that I don't know the others, but then what does that tell us of the industry standard...

Yes, except building a team or gang is part of the fun, and where is the challenge if you start off with a bunch of people you don't even know? I agree that K2 did it wrong by keeping you alone for a very long time, but K1 had it right with one companion right from the beginning and then building on that. However, I'm still hoping that K3 will begin with a young jedi PC with his or her own master from the very beginning, sort of like a Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan thing, where you take the apprentice part. And stop talking about pizza - you're making me hungry!

While I'm happy for Obsidian, I'm sort of disappointed that they could win for an unfinished game... I mean, what signal does that send to the rest of the industry - it's okay to release horribly cut and unfinished games because they'll sell and get awards anyway?

Darthpon should have put "Team Gizka" up there - I would have voted for them

No, that doesn't add up. Canderous didn't become Mandalore until after the events of KotOR1, and it's in KotOR1 that HK-47 describes how he was sent to assassinate Mandalore but failed. This is indeed an inconsistency. Maybe Canderous just remembers it wrong... Also a possibility.

Is this a Lady Lumiya thing? God, that brings back memories... and not all of them good, either

Atton: "Hummmmm...." Handmaiden: "Wzzzz....." Exile: "Okay, that's it! I already told you to stop making lightsaber sounds - drop it now or lightsaber practice is over!!"

Yes, I know, but while it seems clear that Atris was to be Traya in some incarnation of the game, it's still not clear what would trigger that, and whether she would join the group as a playable character in case Kreia was Darth Traya...

Yeah, that's my main problem with GURPS 4th edition too... Still, it's minor next to the problems of many other RPG systems. If you hate class-based and don't like GURPS as skill-based, then what do you prefer?

:"> My bad - I'll go shut up in the corner now... :ph34r:

Note: The following comes with apologies to "thepixiesrock" for reasons that will be entirely too obvious Nihilus: "Mmmhgggr hmmmlllrgg!" Exile: "Gee, what an incredibly unfunny threat..." Again, sorry

Sorry.. I got carried away <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Actually, I think that's my line :D I *really* got carried away on the whole class-vs-skill argument, which is actually secondary to experience levels to me. I don't like classes, but I find that experience levels are worse, since they are truly what distance characters from the common folk and therefore from retaining any sort of believability that serves to suspend your disbelief. You mean this ? Yes, I know, but I do have a problem with that argument in that it's a role-playing solution to a rules-created problem. Of course you can introduce elements of bounty hunters and similar to haunt the PCs if they don't "behave" according to what they should - any good GM can do so without much trouble. But that's not the problem - the problem is that the PCs are powerful enough to destroy a village, and even if you introduce assassins to make them behave again, the villagers will still be just as dead. Besides, you can only place convenient opposition in the PCs' path for so long before you lose credibility in the eyes of your players. Besides, players hate being hit over the head with the GM's stick - they usually play to escape that sort of thing in their real lives in the first place. I once handled it differently in my campaign. The PCs had been involved in a brawl, which led to a trial, where all the PCs were fined and thrown in jail for a few days. Since the barkeep had testified against them, they were angry and wanted revenge, so they researched the barkeep's background, checking to see if he was connected to important families or influential people and so. When they found he was not, they visited his tavern dressed up in hoods, so that he wouldn't recognize them, and the mage extended his hand to shake the barkeep's, then cast Shocking Grasp when he took it, which instantly killed the poor guy. Now, how do you handle a situation like that? It's not as if what the PCs did was implausible, and to suggest that the barkeep would remember the two of them that entered the keep at that point from a single brawl (barkeeps probably have these all the time in AD&D...) is pretty unbelievable. So to stop them I would have had to enforce some pretty fierce rule-bending and rail-roading, which is something I really hate. Besides, the barkeep was really just a generic NPC... Instead I let the barkeep be dead, and the PCs then decided to leave town for a few days. They came back a few days later, badly in need of some healing (they had no cleric in the party) after some random monster encounters. When they went to the church, however, they were taken aside by a cleric, due to some commotion at the center of church. Inquisitive and opportunistic as PCs are, they naturally asked if there was a problem and if they could help, to which the cleric told that one of the younger members of the order was pretty upset because his uncle had recently died under mysterious circumstances and that foul play was suspected. Naturally this uncle was the barkeep... The surprise of the players and the look on their faces when the cleric asked them if they could look into this and find out what happened was quite satisfying and worth letting them kill a generic barkeep for... It also helped the point come across very nicely without lots of hunting and rail-roading on my part That ended any killing spree I ever had in my campaigns, but I honestly don't know what I would do if it happened again - to let the PCs be hunted down within a day or two of killing a village is straining credibility very far. Aafter all, who is left to identify them, and how would experienced bounty hunters/assassins find them so quick? Besides, why would the local baron/king/whatever care about the dead villagers of some forgotten spot in the middle of nowhere? You can set up bounter hunters and so, but it takes time before it works right, and it's actually far more effective if the PCs are being hunted down for being total good guys than for being villains - trust me, I know whereof I speak :D "

This thread seems to have been only about skill-based vs. class-based recently, but my original disgust with d20 wasn't only about the inflexibility of predetermined and rigid classes, though I don't like those much either, as I have described rather a lot already. d20 Cthulhu doesn't have classes, for example, but it does have experience levels. I don't like experience levels, because like classes, they don't make much sense, and in fact they're more problematic. I have no problem with characters progression through the game and improving their abilities - they should do that in any case - but there is a difference between building ability and then suddenly having a load of feats, skill points and what have we tossed in your face once you've gotten some predetermined number of points. I always think of Marcus' rather apt and sarcastic comment about leveling-up in Fallout 2: "Wow! I feel as if I've passed some arbitrary experience value and gained more power!" " In 5th edition Cthulhu you had to build your skills, and actually could only improve skills that you had used successfully during a session. You rolled against your skill and actually to fail that roll for it to improve, thereby making it harder to improve as you got better at it. That's a very simple and nice way of improving skills, and it also makes sense that your bad skills improve faster than your good ones, assuming you managed to successfully use a bad skill. Other games let the GM assign points based on your role-playing that you then distribute to buy Skills or Traits or whatever, which I also find to be a good approach. I mean, why does my 3e wizard's to-hit probability improve when he only ever casts spells and never ever uses a weapon?!? Or where did my 3e paladin suddenly learn magic from, when all he ever does is pummel the critters over the head with his sword? There is no sense of achievement in gaining these improvements, since you never actively worked toward them - you just have them thrown at you at arbitrary and convenient moments wheter you like it or not. There's also the high-level superhero vs. common man problem. I know D&D is about heroic characters, but it's really silly that your group of four 15-th level characters can basically tear apart an orcish army of several thousands without much trouble, let alone the local villages you chance across in your travels... Try reading som "Knights of the Dinner Table" comic books for some extreme examples of how silly that can get. It's just silly to have rules that allow you to fireball a village into oblivion in a few seconds without trouble, and the high-level play also ruins the role-playing experience, since why would your 18th-level paladin fear those shady-loooking characters sneaking sneaking around in that dark alley - there is no chance at all that they can harm him in any way, and players are fully justified by the rules if they show no concern at all about this...

That's a good point, but I think EnderWiggin was talking about skill-based vs. class-based on principle and not in relation to existing material in AD&D or whatever. I certainly was. Then again, the OD&D gaz aren't exactly compatible with AD&D either... But yes, Planescape is a nightmare to convert, since it's so AD&D class/magic specific on many levels (and alignment-specific more so), while Mystara would actually be easier to convert to something else since the OD&D/AD&D split already creates lots of troubles that must be sorted out anyway. Yeah... I mean, with PO rules your wizard specialist can take weapon specialization... " Why would you take weapon specialization if you've chosen to play an illusionist?!? Doesn't make much sense, and nobody would do it, since the cost means severe restrictions on available spell ability and similar that you then don't have enough points to get. Still, I do like the option, even if it's completely redundant... But as we've agreed before, Player Option rules means at least six rulebooks plus your own house rules, and that's pretty rules-heavy even when compared to something like GURPS or similar...

And that's probably my problem - the leash is there and I know it! I can't get my mind around that no matter what, and I cannot dismiss it as unimportant, since there really doesn't seem to be any genuine need for a leash in the first place...

The Atris/Kreia thing has been discussed before, and it seems that when Kreia leaves you on Dantooine after meeting the council, then one of them is to become Darth Traya, while the other should presumably have joined your party. There has been speculation that Atris would be Darth Traya if you're light side, but that's all conjecture, I think.

Yeah, but I guess Lancer just doesn't feel that the classes restrict him or his game, whereas I see classes like a box or a leash - as long as you're fine within the box you're assigned to, you really won't have a problem, but the walls are there, and you'll feel them immediately if you push against them. Or it's the leash - you're completely free within the space the leash allows you, but try to go further than that and you'll be reined in (or else choke, which is what I do...). The game might still work with those restrictions, but even if I can live with them, I still want them gone on principle. No leash for my imagination and no box for my character to fit into!

Hehe - "Qui tacet consentire videtur"... Sorry, couldn't resist