These rules are officially in effect now, so use them for the rest of your fight. Since Tajanna won initiative, it makes sense that using the rules also starts on her turn, even though it's after combat started. Either way. I appreciate the playtesting help, and will be awarding XP as mentioned below.
Obviously, ou should read over the new rules below before your next turn, as there are some important key changes (e.g., the base difficulty of melee attacks is now 1 Purple).
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.
