Its Official: I HATE Vitality/Wound. You?

[turbo]

favours random chance over *everything*

with the right combo of feats and class levels...

Arms and Equipment gives rules for customizing lightsabers. Its expensive and time consumeing, but everyone has ranks in Craft: Lightsaber (needed to make the cursed thing for your trials) so its become the de-facto improvement.

we had one PC Jedi, who wasn't crit-optimized at all.

What?

 

[Remathilis]

Late to the party here, but in my group's experience the WP/VP system produces the 'every fight in dangerous' feel quite nicely. But the ultimate effect is hampered by the other problems in the d20 SW system. Attack bonuses far outstrip defense bonuses at higher levels, making almost every attack a hit and almost every threat a critical. There isn't an 'avoid crit' use for Force Points (unlike Eden's much superior Hero Points system as used in Buffy). Threat ranges are too easily increased through Improved Critical and various prestige class effects. Poison (which requires WP damage to take effect) is useless while stun damage (which bypasses VP and WP entirely) is overpowerful as written. Stacking lightsaber damage bonus dice mean that any lightsaber crit at higher levels is almost guaranteed to be fatal. And so on and so on.

Our group has house-ruled a lot of these issues, and we now have something that, while it's not really Star Warsy, at least functions ok. There are still problems - the attack/defense imbalance is the biggest one, but every system has it's issues. I'm not sure the VP/WP rules (taken in context with the rest of the ruleset) are cinematic enough to do justice to Star Wars, but for creating a genuine sense of threat and deadly combat, they work admirably.

Quoted for truth.

Stun is the Jedi Killer for non force users. Stun him (can't deflect it back) than wolf-pack him.

We've house ruled together some new things: Personalizations don' stack with feats (so crits never better than 18 for LS) no lightsaber damage beyond the first bump, and one prestige class per PC (to keep everyone from dipping into Weapon Master). We're moving into a Non-Jedi game as well (2 PC jedi, both dual classed). Some of this will alieviate our headaches, but it still doesn't remove my major complaint: One Hit Kills make the game more realistic, but at the expense of some playability.

 

[genshou]

Quoted for truth.

Stun is the Jedi Killer for non force users. Stun him (can't deflect it back) than wolf-pack him.

We've house ruled together some new things: Personalizations don' stack with feats (so crits never better than 18 for LS) no lightsaber damage beyond the first bump, and one prestige class per PC (to keep everyone from dipping into Weapon Master). We're moving into a Non-Jedi game as well (2 PC jedi, both dual classed). Some of this will alieviate our headaches, but it still doesn't remove my major complaint: One Hit Kills make the game more realistic, but at the expense of some playability.

Alas, it's that expense of playability that's the problem. And that's why my gaming group moved back to D&D.

Luckily, the GM and I are too stubborn, and now we do solo campaigns with whatever wacky rules we want

 

[Pbartender]

Late to the party here, but in my group's experience the WP/VP system produces the 'every fight in dangerous' feel quite nicely. But the ultimate effect is hampered by the other problems in the d20 SW system. Attack bonuses far outstrip defense bonuses at higher levels, making almost every attack a hit and almost every threat a critical. There isn't an 'avoid crit' use for Force Points (unlike Eden's much superior Hero Points system as used in Buffy). Threat ranges are too easily increased through Improved Critical and various prestige class effects. Poison (which requires WP damage to take effect) is useless while stun damage (which bypasses VP and WP entirely) is overpowerful as written. Stacking lightsaber damage bonus dice mean that any lightsaber crit at higher levels is almost guaranteed to be fatal. And so on and so on.

Our group has house-ruled a lot of these issues, and we now have something that, while it's not really Star Warsy, at least functions ok. There are still problems - the attack/defense imbalance is the biggest one, but every system has it's issues. I'm not sure the VP/WP rules (taken in context with the rest of the ruleset) are cinematic enough to do justice to Star Wars, but for creating a genuine sense of threat and deadly combat, they work admirably.

This is one reason why I'm running my next Star Wars game using Spycraft 2.0 rules.

 

[billd91]

One Hit Kills make the game more realistic, but at the expense of some playability.

Wow, I'd hate to think what you feel about Call of Cthulhu or Runequest or Cyberpunk or a whole host of other games in which lethality is a serious issue.

For what it's worth, I like the VP/WP structure in Star Wars. It keeps an element of fantasy in the game (for those mook fights where the threat range is narrow and confirmation tricky) while keeping high tech weapons reasonably lethal.
I've played mostly Living Force and I don't think I've seen many criticals at all. Lethality was quite low among us non-Jedi players but I think that was mostly because of tactics. (Hitting the deck to fire away with your blaster rifle at the dark jedi and her goons across the hangar is a better plan than rushing her IMHO.)

 

[MoonZar]

Hello,

I really like the vp/wp system this more realistic. After all, everyone could be kill by a single gunshot or sword blow. Vitaly points represent your stamina to avoid blow, but even if you're in good shape, someone can hit you directly at a vital organ and you're done.


This simply make the player avoid combat and find other solution and be more creative.

The d20 Babylon 5 edition have the same issue, you have one hit dice (d10,d6 etc...)at level one and then you improve by 1, 2 or 3 hp each level. So you don't see much people who have more then 15 hp. Then each gunshot can knockdown a character...

Maybe this make the characters more vunerable, but this simply logical. You still can be heroic...

Also don't forget that this very easy to stabilize when you're between -1 and -9. This require a saving thrown each round until you're okay. So most people succeed...

So even if someone is unlucky and got knockdown with a critical hit, he have good chance to don't fall directly at -10 and his friend will help him after the combat.

 

[Prince Atom]

Someone said lightsabers ignore armor. I recall this rule from the book, but I don't think it's borne up by the movies.

If I may put on my hat of SW geekiness, near the end of the duel on Cloud City, Luke tags Vader on the right shoulder. Vader cries out and grabs his shoulder, but he's not hurt too badly because he's later fully capable of disarming Luke so that George can set up a fairly obvious link between the two in RotJ.

Now, if sabers ignored armor, Vader should have lost his arm right there, and maybe had torso damage. I don't care if it's mechanical or not; the battle droids are no tougher than anyone else when the sabers start flying, nor is anything else made of metal.

So why does a lightsaber get to ignore armor in the rules?

TWK

 

[kenobi65]

If I may put on my hat of SW geekiness, near the end of the duel on Cloud City, Luke tags Vader on the right shoulder. Vader cries out and grabs his shoulder, but he's not hurt too badly because he's later fully capable of disarming Luke so that George can set up a fairly obvious link between the two in RotJ.

(1) Trying to 100% accurately reproduce events in the movies using the game rules is a recipe for heartbreak.

(2) That said, your example is still easy to explain within the rules: Luke scored a crit on that blow, but got a really lousy damage roll, and Vader made his Fort save to keep going. Not every critical hit is going to do enough damage to drop the opponent to negative WPs, even discounting the effect of armor.

 

[Henry]

My play group has played a good bit (about 30 sessions or so total) of d20 Star Wars, and we didn't have a problem with the VP/WP system. However, we also expressly did not use the "crit improvements" from Arms and Equipment or any other source, because we understood the importance of keeping crits rare. In a system where there's only TWO weapons out of 30 that have anything more than a 20 crit range, it's understood that crits are supposed to be rare, no matter what unbalanced-yet-supposedly-compatible material comes after it. At most, improved crit was available, and it worked as intended - a good reward, but not a game-stopper.

 

[linnorm]

So far I've enjoyed my experience with the VP/WP system. The people I game with tend toward the overconfident. (i.e. I had one D&D session where the player was ignoring the guy with the dagger who was stabbing him to make Search checks. Looking back I should have told him he couldn't make the checks with someone standing there stabbing him, but I was so taken back by the arrogance it didn't occur to me.) To contrast, in the SW sessions I've run noone has even considered something like this. I explained the idea behind VP/WP at the very start and it seems everyone paid attention; especially after one of the jedi cut a mook in half on his first strike and I noted that the same thing can happen to them.

In the last session I ran the players went out of their way to use non-lethal attacks to subdue someone to avoid the risk of getting a lucky shot killing the guy. The extra lethality of the VP/WP system has gone a long way toward reigning in the player's antics.

I think the system actually makes the characters more heroic. What's more impressive, jumping in to help someone at significant risk to yourself or no risk to yourself?