force powers

[ShinIchiro]

I got to go for now, but before my tiredness overcomes me and I loose intelligibility, what are duel wielding rules and what sorta campaign are you running (emphasis on combat, diplomacy. ect....)? Also, what time period are you thinking and do you have any race/idea bans/reccomendations? Also how strict are you with Dark Side Points?

[EnderAndrew]

As far as species, Noghri and Defels are right out. I'm pretty open with most other species.

 

As far as time period, I really like the Thrawn time period. At the begining of Empire, it's hard to feasibly work Jedi into strories. During the Thrawn period it makes more sense for Jedi to come out of hiding, or to begin to rise again, even if they're half trained, or trained by Holocrons. During a KOTOR time period, Jedi are abundant.

 

There aren't rules for duel-wielding sabers or guns per se. I could make some up.

 

However, the rules do allow you to take multiple actions in a round. For every action pass the first one, you drop a dice from all rolls that round.

 

If you want to shoot three times in a round, and have a Blaster skill of 7D, then you shoot three times at 5D. Having a second gun in your off hand is a stylistic thing, and doesn't necessarily change the rules. The same could be said for a second saber. You only get one attack at your full dice pool. Additional attacks, whether with one saber or two, drop your dice pool.

 

I'm pretty strict with Dark Side points, however it also depends how new the player is. I usually warn a player when the declare an action that will likely kill the player, or lead to a dark side point.

 

Player: I'd like to shove this cube of detonite into the reactor core of this ship I'm on.

Me: You do realize the whole ship will blow up, with you on it.

Player: Strike that, reverse it. Can I use my demolitions skill to rig an explosion to go off in 5 minutes?

Me: Well, you can certainly try....

 

Player: Warlord Zsinj is a real jerk. I'd like to telekinetically force choke the bastard!

Me: Well, he is a jerk. However, he's not actively threatening anyone, and you're using the Force to injure someone, so that would lead to a Dark Side point.

Player: I can live with one Dark Side point... The bastard is worth it!

Me: And so the path to the Dark Side begins.

[ShinIchiro]

And how does the process of purchasing force powers work? At character creation I mean.

[EnderAndrew]

Err... that depends.

 

The stock rules say that you spend Attribute points on buying Control, Sense, and Alter. These three Force Powers are what you roll for everything Force related. For every "pip" you have in each of these powers, you have access to Force Skills. Let's say you have 1D in Sense. So you have three Sense Force Skills, and could take Detect Life, Life Sense, and Force Sense.

 

If you wanted to activate Life Sense, you roll your Sense rating.

 

This tones down Jedi severely, and makes the game a whole lot more fair. Non-Jedi have the advatage of more points in attributes. However, if you only have a few dice in Force Powers (such as 1D in each of the three powers like the rule books suggest for a starting Jedi) then it's REALLY hard to do anything with the Force. You can't really successfully activate most powers, ever.

 

If it was an all Jedi party, I might be more generous and just give the players each 5 or 6 dice to split amongst the 3 Force Powers. At 2D a pop, you're still a weak fledgling Jedi, but you have a shot of activating powers. And if you put 3D or 4D in one of the powers, you'll be half-way decent in that power to start. It's not fair to Non-Jedi to give away free dice to Jedi players, so it somewhat depends on the party make-up.

[ShinIchiro]

I hear these character points are applicable for just about every form of improvement. How hard are they to gain?

[EnderAndrew]

Im generally fairly generous with them.

 

It depends how well the players role-played, what they accomplished, how well they stayed in-character, etc.

 

If a group is having a really good session, I give away about two character points per hour we roleplay.

 

Raising a skill one-pip costs the current rating in character points. Thusly, it costs 4 character points to raise your Droid Repair skill from 4D to 4D+1.

 

Attributes cost ten times as much. You also can't raise attributes above your racial limit. At the lower levels, stuff raises pretty quick. When your skills are at 10D, it takes 30 character points to raise to 11D. (10 points for each of the three pips)

[ShinIchiro]

Erm...doesn't that mean that attributes cost the same as skills...at least they follow the same pattern. 1 pip per points equal to current. That's not ten times. Or is it? Summer vacation=math challenged.

[ShinIchiro]

Anyway, do the battles manage to preserve the cinematic feel of the movies and books? Does this system reproduce the classic star wars feeling?

[EnderAndrew]

Erm...doesn't that mean that attributes cost the same as skills...at least they follow the same pattern.  1 pip per points equal to current.  That's not ten times.  Or is it?  Summer vacation=math challenged.

Skills raise at 1x, and attributes raise at 10x.

 

To raise your Dexterity from 3D to 3D+1 = 30 character points.

 

As far as the Cinematic feel, I really think the system captures it well. The rules are quick, and fluid. The story moves quickly, and every chase sequence I've run has been pretty tense. The player is also "hero" level when it comes to attributes, so that helps.

[nightcleaver]

I have mixed feelings on the thrawn era. KotOR era is good, I think. Maybe between the first and second KotOR? That's my preference. I'm doing a Jedi too, I think.

[ShinIchiro]

If I had 5 votes it would be 3 for thrawn era and 2 for kotor era. I would prefer thrawn (simply because I haven't seen it done and it's a cool time of change in the books), but only by a tiny bit. If the other people want to do KOTOR era, I'd be happy to.

[nightcleaver]

This is the d6 system, yes?

[GhostofAnakin]

my vote goes for the KOTOR era.

 

But if not that, then I definitely agree the Thrawn era.

 

I guess I'll be one of the party's only non-Jedi

 

Unless that poses a problem, then I'll gladly be a Jedi

[nightcleaver]

Well, I'd prefer having Force powers separate from attribute points, and if we have a non-jedi that means we won't have that option. Unless you don't mind that advantage of characters.

It really doesn't make a huge difference, though. If you really want to be a non-jedi, I think that would be cool. I might make a non-jedi as well, though probably not.

 

Idea... how about we coordinate force powers? If we have three Jedi, we could each specialize in one of the areas.

 

I'll focus on sense.

[Indalecio]

my vote goes for the KOTOR era.

 

But if not that, then I definitely agree the Thrawn era.

 

I guess I'll be one of the party's only non-Jedi

 

Unless that poses a problem, then I'll gladly be a Jedi

I might play as well, depending on what days are availible. If so, then I'll probably play non-Jedi as well. KOTOR or Thrawn era, it doesn't really matter to me.

[ShinIchiro]

I got telekinesis if we do that. I don't know what type that goes under or what it's called in these rules, but I got telekinesis....wait no sense...wait not telekinesis. I guess we should each start out specializing in one type and diversify. I want to have that lightsaber combat one. We should each specialize in different aspects of jedi-ness (e.g. in KOTOR they have consulars and their opposites guardians). I just read up on the telekinesis, and shouldn't getting a dark side point vary on the situation when you attack someone with objects. If killing someone with a saber isn't a dsp but knocking them unconcious with a piece of metal that you telekinesis is always a dark side point there's a problem.

[GhostofAnakin]

What happens if one (or more) of us can't make one of the sessions?

 

I've got a lot of free time currently, but I can't really guarantee that will continue.

[ShinIchiro]

Same here. I'm pretty much unavalible mon and wed 5:30-8:30 for the next six weeks. I also am busy thurs 7 o'clock, and have a summer vacation trip to Cape Cod at the end of July or early august.

[ShinIchiro]

I guess it's final we are KOTOR era playing?

[EnderAndrew]

First off, it seems KOTOR is slightly more popular than Thrawn, but I'll wait and see if any more players trickle in. Darque said she might play and I like having a female player in any given group. In fact, I don't think I've run a game without a female player since junior high. It adds a certain amount of diversity.

 

As far as Force Powers, the lists over at rancorpit.com break down what skills go under Control, Sense and Alter.

 

Here's my take on C-S-A. Control is the ability to affect your own personal energy within the Force, and how the Force flows through you. Sense is your ability to sense and detect presences of the Force, and ripples within it. Alter allows you to redirect and affect the Force on an external level. Thusly, telekinesis falls under the purview of Alter.

 

Alter has very few skills. However, one might argue that Telekinesis in and of itself is huge. There are also Force Skills that use multiple, or all three Force Powers. For instance, I think Affect Mind is a Sense-Alter, or a Control-Sense-Alter power. In that case, you have to make successful Control checks, Sense checks, and Alter checks.

 

As far as scheduling, I can go a few ways. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights I'm home and can run a gaming session. I could also theorhetically run a session online from work Monday nights. 95% of the time I'm at work, I sit around and surf the net with nothing to do. My job is similiar to working for the fire department. I sit around and wait for something to go wrong to fix it. So if people really wanted to play Monday, I could feasibly do it from work, however once in a while, I may get called away for 5 or 10 minutes to go fix something. Tuesday nights are the only night at work that I have work since I do a bunch of tape backups and DB2 server maintenance.

 

I'd like to have one night a week to game, and try to keep the game regular. If you don't make the game, your character will either be conviently left behind if story permits, or NPCed by me if story does not permit your character to be left behind. If we end the session at a nice story end, and everyone is sitting around on the ship, your character doesn't have to partake in the next session. If we end on a cliff-hanger, and everyone is one location, I may have no option but to NPC a character. I hate breaking story to have characters magically appear and disappear. If you so desire, you can choose to have another player proxy your character if you prefer.

 

If we have one non-jedi character in a party of Jedi, I will likely give a few free dice of Force Powers to make the game enjoyable, while giving the sole non-jedi possession of a ship. I've found in group dynamics, that owning a ship gives you certain leeway over other characters. What the captain says, usually goes. Thusly, that is a significant advantage.

[nightcleaver]

We should get in chat sometime and organize everything. I want to figure out how we all meet and all that.

 

Really, whichever era you have a better story for is best.

 

 

Ok, shin... which force powers do you like? I want diplomatic and sense skills, and supporting control OR (if at all possible) subterfuge skills.

 

Do individual force powers take skill points? Or are they all, in a given area, only affected by the "attribute" of the three Force areas?

[GhostofAnakin]

Is "alter" a predominantly DS Force skill? The reason I ask is in a couple of my source books, Yoda has higher skills than the Emperor and Vader in Control and Sense, but the Emperor has a higher skill than Yoda in Alter.

 

As for character choice, if everyone else is going to be a Jedi, I don't want to be the only non-Jedi. I was only thinking of being non-Jedi if we had, for example, 6 people in the party, and 3 were Jedi, 3 non-Jedi. But if it's a case of 5 Jedi plus my character, I might as well go with the flow.

[EnderAndrew]

The individual Force skills such as Life Sense, Telekinesis, etc do not have seperate skill ratings.

 

You just roll Control, Sense and Alter.

[Indalecio]

Probably play an archaeologist myself. Besides the normal combat skills, I'll probably have Languages, Knowledge:Archaelogy, Planetary Systems, First Aid, and maybe Astrogation.

 

Ender how are you handling skills? Any skill not specifically mentioned on the char sheet is there, but at the base attribute value, correct?

 

Do you have any house rules?

[nightcleaver]

That makes two and two, anakin.

 

He has race limitations. Look back in the thread if you haven't seen it - it's not much.

 

 

What's your style of combat, Shin? I'm going the finesse/paladin-type route, hopefully.

 

If you take control, you'll do more damage with your lightsaber hits. Do you want to use force powers or the lightsaber more?