OOC General Chat

So, the Hyperspace Duels are most definitely interesting, but keep your focus on the narrative.

The Hyperspace Duels are essentially timeless, so no worries there when it come to making them happen.

So I'm getting the impression that the current plan is to assist Nash

To be fair, my intent with this is to use him rather than him use us. He has contacts, assets, personnel and a general understanding of the lay of the land, all things we don't currently possess. As things continue, I expect we will find others that we will be able to use. We will keep them around as long as they are useful. I don't however think we should leave him be, he does know about us and he would not pass up on the opportunity to gain something from knowing what he does. So if we don't use him, then he must be killed. Those are the only two options in my mind. Ultimately, even if we do end up using him as the puppet, he is nothing more than a puppet to us, especially if we succeed and the Sith Empire is able to gain control of the CSA sectors with no resistance.

A NOTE ON IMPROVING COMBAT

I have been tinkering with the idea of opening up combat a little by giving the players the option to use their abilities to create defense, as a way of adding some realism, tactical depth, and personality to the game.

It's really simple, actually. When attacking, the player can choose how many of their dice they would like to use for the attack. The remaining dice are added to a pool for defending against attacks directed at them, until the start of their next turn, reflecting the character focusing a portion of their efforts on defense.

For example, say Hawke wants to shore up his melee defense this round. From his total Lightsaber pool of 3 Yellow/1Green, he might use his three yellow dice to attack, leaving one green in the pool. That one green, when Tajanna attacks, would be converted into a purple, added to the base melee attack difficulty of two purple, totaling a difficulty of 3 purple for the attack. Yellows would be converted to Purples, as I'd want to avoid trying to use these defensive methods as a means of artificially generating Despair for the opponent.

This would even allow players the choice to invest all of their dice to defense, completely foregoing any attack whatsoever, in an effort to simply survive until help arrives, or as a means of waiting for an opening (e.g., the attacker generates 6 Threat, which the defender could then convert into 3 Boosts as a counter attack on their next turn).

For ranged weapon characters, I think I would only allow this if they had cover to use, in which case their skill would reflect their character being able to line up shots in less time, or by exposing less of themselves.

Also, it seems that it might be more sensible, using this method, to reduce the standard difficulty of melee attacks to one purple, so that defense isn't weighted too favorably.

For melee, it wouldn't provide additional defense against ranged attacks. However, it would definitely add a little more of a mind game to melee duels, with the potential to generate Threat, as a result of too few dice on any attack, and the potential to create additional Threat for an attacker, by adding dice on your own defense. The best part is that, RP wise, characters would literally be able to have their own fighting style, beyond standard Melee, Lightsaber techniques (Ataru, Soresu, etc), Talents, and Skill Ranks, allowing them to put another stamp on the character's personality to make it all their own.

What do you guys think? It makes sense to me that a character should be able to decide how focused on the attack they want to be, or how long they want to expose themselves for a good shot (in this case, the Ranged skill also reflects their experience with using cover well). We could even play test it in the Duels Thread, and I think it has the potential to make combat in the SW game more dramatic, with more control over your characters actions (how aggressive they're being, how much they're using cover, etc).

The only potential issue I can see is that this may reduce the value of existing Talents, gear, and maneuvers that give additional defensive dice, and that it'll make a good dice pool even more important than it already is (someone with 4+ dice could make themselves almost untouchable to someone with 3- dice pool, just by adding one or two dice to defence each turn, while still being able to devote multiple dice to attack). It could also result in combats being drawn out further, as wounds are dealt less frequently, and thus prolong the game.

I don't think any of those are likely to be huge issues, but they might be worth thinking about before implementing those rules.

I agree with Tefmon on this one since there is stuff that exists specifically for improving defense.

What we could do is test it out in Hyperspace Duels and see how it works.

I'm fine with reducing the value of the existing talents, and the effect would be very minimal, especially when you look at those talents and realize the value they add to the combatant. The crux of it all is this: FFG made combat too simplified in some respects, and despite the fact that characters do have access to Talent, etc, combat is fairly vanilla in the game, including the maneuvers you reference (Aim, Guarded Stance). Also, a good dice pool will always be important, but making this change will not be a game breaker, not even close. Even with this kind of change, I can think of things that I would most definitely prioritize as more important for combat than adding another Lightsaber dice to the skill pool.

Yes, there are maneuvers, gear, talents, etc that can improve defense, and this extra layer of strategy will only improve upon the system, allowing players to put their own personal stamp on their character, beyond what the build allows.

Also, some combatants should be untouchable when fighting. We can draw on canon for this, and consider someone like Darth Vader going up against Luke in Empire Strikes Back: Luke never stood a chance, and, in fact, Vader wasn't even trying to beat him during that fight on Bespin toward the end of the movie, rather, he was trying to turn Luke to the Dark Side, almost toying with Luke like a cat with a mouse. Given that we can safely say Vader had something like 5 Yellow, and Luke might have been 1 Yellow and 2 Green, it absolutely makes sense that Vader should be able to own Luke, and control the combat from start to finish.

There are plenty of examples I can think of where master level force users would absolutely dominate an inexperienced Knight, or even easier, a Padawan. Darth Sidious, Maul, Qui-gon Jinn, Ep III Obi-Wan, Yoda, etc. All of those guys would be packing serious Lightsaber skills in the pool, but I still have to add this: based on the Talents available in the game to multiple Specializations, my view on this is that having a high Lightsaber skill is simply one of the important aspects of being a masterful combatant; there are a plethora of Talents that outshine the change I am talking about, and the fact of the matter is this: a true Lightsaber master is gong to be combining Lightsaber Talents from multiple Specializations, likely 3+ of them.*

What I really want to do with this change is open a little more strategy to combat, beyond "I Aim" or "Guarded Stance", and I want the change to reflect the character's skill with their chosen weapon. I want players to be able to decide how aggressive, or defensive, they want their characters to act, and over time I think it will be readily apparent that these subtle changes will also being more excitement, and fun, to the game. And, as far as drawing out combat, I think that won't happen as much as you think, and will really come into play when fighting major NPC characters, in which case the combat should be drawn out some, reflecting the importance of the event by the ups and downs of the battle.

*As a side note, I picked something up on a forum about characters picking up new specializations. A GM on that forum mentioned that he wanted to try and encourage players to diversify, and be able to build more unique characters that suit their tastes, rather than feel handcuffed by what's called the 'XP tax' for going to a Specialization outside of your career. I've got to admit, I like the idea of freeing up your characters to pursue whatever path they choose, as part of their experience in the game and learning as they go. As such, I'm thinking of doing something like this: we completely abandon the 'tax' and the incremental Specialization purchasing system, and simply calling the cost to pickup a new Specialization 20 XP, base cost, no matter how many specializations you have, or your career. 20 XP, period.

More thoughts on adjusted combat rules, excerpts from another conversation I had:

Some extra defense dice won't have a significant impact on Parry and Reflect. As someone who is a gamer when it comes to character design, I've got to say that the reliability of Parry and Reflect simply cannot be overlooked. Even if I had 6 Yellow dice for my Lightsaber skill, Parry would still be the biggest player, by far, in my defense. It's a guaranteed way to stop damage, and, if you can stop all damage on a single attack, even negate criticals. Dice are random. Parry/Reflect are constant, reliable, always there to use as an incidental.

As far as the 'all out defense' character, they still would have to expose themselves when they do decide to finally attack, committing some dice to offense; in the meantime, however, they are allowing their opponent the opportunity to land a hit, even if it is less likely.

As far as Talents like Improved Parry, that would allow the all out defense character a viable strategic option, playing defense and looking for easy openings; however, they'd have to a fairly capable combatant to utilize this strategy, and remember, those counterattacks from Improved Parry are basic damage only, no extra damage for additional successes, no potential to generate any Advantage.

On the offensive side of things, It's worth keeping mind that generating Advantage can be used in the same fashion, to add Setbacks to the opponent's next attack, or Boosts to your next attack (considering these ideas, along with the base rules already in play, it really gets me stoked for combat becoming more than build type and dice rolls, and instead becomes part chess match). All of this is takes place while the player also has to consider when/how often to replenish their stamina, using advantage they generate from attacking (mind you, the all out defender can't generate Advantage to replenish their strain threshold).

With the all out defender in mind, I took another look at the dice in the CRB, to appraise probability, specifically the potential results for each dice. Purple difficulty dice do have a significantly increased chance to roll Threat/Failure, and at this point, given that there are also defensive talents and gear, I'm considering something like this:

Yellow dice could be converted into Purples for Defense, whereas Green would be converted into Setbacks. The primary idea here being to make certain that combats don't go on forever; a bonus is that it also helps keep some more of that value for Parry/Reflect. Also, this will make converting dice toward defense less of a guaranteed lock down, and more of a supplement to defense (given that a Black Setback dice has a 33% chance to come up blank, whereas a Purple Difficulty dice has only a 12.5% chance to come up blank, meaning the Purple dice have a much greater potential to influence combat.

I think it might be a good idea to require a Maneuver, at the start of the turn, for the character to alter the Attack and Defense dice pools, reflecting a concentrated focus for the character that turn on switching gears, preventing quick changes wherein the player can stack Aim or Guarded Stance with a dice pool change too easily, unless they are willing to sacrifice some strain for an extra maneuver that turn (e.g., feeling threatened, they go full defense, and really want that Guarded Stance Setback added to their opponent's next attack).

I'll have to do some more thinking on it, but I definitely want to playtest this in the Duels forum, as I think it has a lot of potential to make the game better..

A copy of part of an earlier post, to make sure nobody misses it:

As a side note, I picked something up on a forum about characters picking up new specializations. A GM on that forum mentioned that he wanted to try and encourage players to diversify, and be able to build more unique characters that suit their tastes, rather than feel handcuffed by what's called the 'XP tax' for going to a Specialization outside of your career. I've got to admit, I like the idea of freeing up your characters to pursue whatever path they choose, as part of their experience in the game and learning as they go. As such, I'm thinking of doing something like this: we completely abandon the 'tax' and the incremental Specialization purchasing system, and simply calling the cost to pickup a new Specialization 20 XP, base cost, no matter how many specializations you have, or your career. 20 XP, period.

This is what we'll go with. I'm going to get rid of the 10 XP tax for buying Specializations outside of your Career; beyond that, we're going to use the RaW for buying specializations (XP cost = the total number of Specializations you WILL have, after you get the new one, multiplied by 10). This will prevent players from taking cheap dips into a Specialization to pick up high value, cheap Talents.

The Library has been updated to reflect this change under Buying New Specializations.

COMBAT POOLS: ATTACK AND DEFENSE

So, I've decided to officially move this forward for playtesting. As a means of motivating all of you to help playtest the improved combat rules...

I'm going to start awarding XP to those that help playtest the new combat rules: 2 XP for a win, 1 XP for a loss.

I'm giving 2 XP out for wins as a means of motivating you to try your damnedest to win, rather than just show up and bank some XP for simply being in the duel, which would be useless for good playtesting (please, don't do that). Also, please don't use this as a substitute for getting XP in the narrative, as that is still the focus of our game (if I feel you're focusing more on dueling than the narrative, you'll likely find yourself barred from dueling, at least temporarily). You can only be involved in one duel at a time, but beyond that there are no limits to how many duels you can participate in per month.

Worth mentioning is that the playtesting XP awards will not last forever, so get involved while you can.

Also, to make sure everyone can be involved without too much downtime, I'll provide a sparring partner, ensuring you don't have to wait too long for your next duel. For this purpose, I'm opening up a new forum in the Hyperspace Duels called 'Sleeping Quarters: Duels in Dreamland', from which you'll be able to fight a variety of opponents, in your dreams, or your nightmares.

If you like, you can even create a future, higher level version of your character with more XP (remember, there's no 10 XP tax anymore for buying Specializations outside of your Career), then use it yourself in a Dreamland fight. If you're planning on doing this, it's probably a good idea to announce the XP value of this character's build, allowing someone else to create a build of equal value for that duel, if it will be needed.

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The official rules on how the new combat system will work
Some definitions, for the purposes of the content below:
---'Melee' within the context of the below rules will refer to the following skills: Brawl, Melee, and Lighstaber.
---'Ranged' within the context of the below rules will refer to the following skills: Ranged-Light and Ranged-Heavy.
---'RaW' refers to Rules as Written.

(1) The rules will be universally applied to both Melee and Ranged Combatants:

---Against Melee combatants, we'll assume upgrading defense is the character's effort to dodge, focus on defensive positioning/movement, maintaining separation, non-Strain inducing Parry/Reflect (the many swings/thrusts of weapons you see in the movies), etc. In this respect, I've always imagined that Reflect, and especially Parry, only used strain against the strongest attacks, as I envision that there are more slashes/thrusts/parries/etc than the dice rolls and the mechanics presented anyway.

---Against Ranged combatants, we'll assume upgrading defense is some combination of making better use of cover, moving evasively/fast, or the character's ability to make themselves 'small' when it comes to getting shot at, crouching down to an extent, etc.

---In any case, Melee vs Melee, Melee vs Ranged, Ranged vs Ranged, Ranged vs Melee, the rules will be universal. Every type of character will be able to take full advantage of these rules.

(2) The Engaged range attack difficulty will continue to be 1 Purple Difficulty for Ranged combatants (using RaW), but will also be changed to 1 Purple Difficulty for Melee combatants.
---Using RaW (F&D p.217), Ranged-Light combatants will add 1 to their difficulty against both Engaged Ranged and Melee opponents, whereas Ranged-Heavy combatants will add 2 to their attack difficulty in such cases. As it should, using Ranged weapons against Engaged combatants should be difficult.
---This change (dropping one of the Purple Difficulty for Melee combatants) is to reflect that part of the Melee combatant's efforts should, to some extent, be focused on defending themselves, depending on their actual interest in doing so. Whether your character prefers to build walls of defense, attack like a frenzied berserker, or switch up tactics depending on the situation and the opponent, it's up to you. Be the kind of combatant you want to be, and develop your own personalized fighting style.
---This change will also even things out a bit, making it a little harder to stack defense, while allowing a slightly wider range of offensive/defensive behavior for Melee combatants (e.g., going 'all out' on the offensive will be balanced against characters who are likewise going 'all out' on defense).

(3) Prior to attacking on any turn, the player may convert any number of dice* from the appropriate combat skill, depending on their equipped weapon(s) (Lightsaber, Melee, Ranged), into a defensive dice pool, increasing the difficulty of their opponent's attacks, using the conversion methods below.
---Yellow Attack dice can be converted into Purple Difficulty dice, which are added to their opponent's attack difficulty.
---Green Attack dice can be converted into Black Setback dice, which are added to their opponent's attack difficulty.
---These pools will be referred to as 'attack' (Yellow/Green) and 'defense' (Purple/Black) pools.
---Any adjustments made to a character's attack/defense pools carries over from round to round, until the player makes another adjustment, prior to attacking on any turn. Adjustments can, of course, be made without a followup attack.
---Dice are downgraded when converting from Attack to Defense due to the fact that all attacks start with at least one Purple Difficulty, in addition to preventing abuse of the new Defense pool mechanic. Also, this will ensure that defensive Talents that upgrade dice (Dodge, Defensive Stance, Side Step, etc) will continue to have value. We're going for balance here, and downgrading Attack Dice to Defense dice seems like a good fit.

(4) Characters will have a default setting for both Attack and Defense pools, recorded on their character sheet, which will be used to start combat for situations in which their character is not surprised/ambushed (meaning initiative was rolled with Cool).
---Otherwise, when surprised/ambushed, characters must wait for their first turn to adjust their combat pools, which means, except for the Engaged range Difficulty change above for Melee combatants, that combat will ultimately be played out using RaW, until your character gets a turn). I'm also a big fan of this because it lends more value to getting the drop on someone for an easy kill.

*Initially, I considered requiring a Maneuver to convert Attack dice to Defense dice, but didn't want to interfere with combat movement and some of the Talents that require a Maneuver to use (Defensive Stance, Center of Being, Saber Swarm, Side Step, etc). I'm still considering making it cost a Maneuver, as part of an effort to stop players from stacking Aim or Guarded Stance with dice pool conversions, also keeping in mind that players can spend 2 Strain on any turn to give their characters a 2nd Maneuver.

For now, let's start with conversion being free, although I'm still looking for some insight on this one. What do you guys think? Free dice pool conversion, or Maneuver cost for conversion? I'm leaning heavily toward free, simply because, like I said, I don't want to discourage the use of Talents, or characters moving around the battlefield; discouraging Talent use seems far worse than allowing players to continue to use Aim/Guarded Stance. However, I'm open to being talked out of it, so if you disagree with me, I'd like to hear it.

Excellent addition to the Group Journal Squeeks. Obviously not everyone has to be that thorough, but if everyone is contributing their own thoughts/ideas/perceptions of the narrative, it will all come together and help all of you build a better picture of what's going on in the game, which, in turn, should help when you guys try to determine how you would like to proceed when decisions need to be made.

Squeeks, I made some minor adjustments and supplemented a detail or two about the Executive Board for your notes, which are an excellent basic summary of the who and the what of Kraspen, Bonadan, and the CSA.

When I realized how important it might be to refer back to notes, I skimmed back through all the threads to pick up on anything I thought might be important as well as add Lissewa's comments about them. It is certainly not everything but I figured it would be fun to put together a more personal log.

Pilot Sith, Armour Sith, Spy Sith, and Snooty Sith. One of these is not like the other.

She doesn't know much about him. Outwardly, he doesn't even really seem like a Sith. She hasn't seen him fight with a lightsaber or use any special powers. The powers he has used are more inward or subtle. These are at this point in time, her initial takes on the crew mates and they will evolved over time.

Well, if you guys opened up your separate chapters to one another, you'd get to see... ;)

So, I've taken a moment to consider some of the group's actions regarding Morality and Conflict. Don't consider the conflict awarded below as a penalty. Rather, consider it as what it simply is: Conflict. It's not that your character(s) did something wrong, or made mistakes, it's just that their affiliation with the Dark Side makes some of their actions a little harder to swallow.

Consider this table from the Library's Morality and the Dark Side:
The full rules for how Conflict will affect your characters can be found in the link above.


COMMON CONFLICT PENALTIES FOR DARK SIDE CHARACTERS

Knowing Inaction. The PC knows that an NPC or PC will do something to oppose them and allows them to do so. 1-3 conflict. Fear, Weakness.

Self-Incrimination. Honesty detrimental to the PC or their agenda. 1-3 conflict. Fear, Weakness.

Fleeing from/Submitting/Surrendering to a Direct Threat. The PC may consider their flight as the consequence of an associated personal failure that put themselves in a position of weakness. 0-4 conflict. Fear, Weakness.

Seeking Peaceful Resolution to a direct threat of violence. 1-5 conflict. Fear, Weakness, Compassion.

Unnecessary Acts of Kindness. Helping others, unselfishly aiding them in some way. 3-7 conflict. Compassion, Justice.

Granting Mercy, especially to an enemy. 3-10 conflict. Mercy, Compassion, Justice.

Endangering Yourself Unselfishly, to help others. 6-12 conflict. Mercy, Compassion, Justice.

Self-Sacrifice. Offering to take the place of another, etc. at great peril to yourself. 15+ conflict. Mercy, Compassion, Altruism.

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Something to note is that the table above refers to 'common penalties'. As such, I'm going to interpret your characters' actions over the course of the adventure so far and dole out some Conflict as follows:
Remember, picking up Conflict only increases the chance that your Morality will swing toward the Light Side of the force, when we do finally roll to see how it affects your Morality.

To clarify what seems to be some confusion for some of you, you guys have already tried to contact Fleshcrawler on your comlinks, when you first docked (just making sure you know you don't need your holo-terminal for that, it just provided a more secure means of communicating than a comlink; the holo-terminal would be primarily to contact STRAT-COM, per mission protocol in this situation where things have not gone to plan).

You can refer to the opening post of the game and see that you came to the conclusion that Fleshcrawler's comcode was simply unregistered/didn't exist, as it should have. It should have existed, or at least that was the STRAT-COM plan.

Of course, for those of you who may already be in tune with the knowledge above, you may have considered that Nash might be able to facilitate contact, assuming that Fleshcrawler is also the man that Nash now works for, as has been theorized by some of you.

I've streamlined things and moved some threads from the 'Characters' sub-forum to the front page. It seemed like keeping the below listed miscellaneous threads on the front page, along with other useful threads, would make accessing them easier, allowing you to look in one place for what you need. Let me know if this is not the case.

Also, the 'Characters' forum has been organized, sorting the characters alphabetically by player name (much like I do everywhere else in the game).

Duty, Obligation, and Morality Tracker
Group Finances and Assets
The Spear of Akrulta (YT-2000 Light Freighter)