Its Official: I HATE Vitality/Wound. You?

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

True, but my point is that Vitality, in that regard, is usually useless. It doesn't matter if you have 1 or 1,000 vitality, if your Owen Lars or Boba Fett, or if your a PC or a nameless commoner, DEATH (or near death) is always one lucky die roll from happening. Thats it. It ignores defense (most crits happen on the "always hit" 20, and confirming is usually easy except on tertiary attacks), it ignores Vitality, and looks at one number: your 3-18 Con score.

And here's the absolute root of all the problems I've had with what you're saying: You're overexaggerating things far too much.

Death is NOT always one lucky die roll from happening. Unconsciousness may be, but death sure isn't. Wingsandsword already pointed this out earlier. An average blaster does 3d6 damage. That can't kill even an average Con 10 character. Sure, a blaster rifle can at 3d8, but that's still going to be rare. Yes, you are knocked out under 0VP, but knocked out does NOT equal dead.

Confirming crits is also not nearly as easy as you make it out to be. At higher levels, maybe, but even then, you have to take into account DR(since we aren't just talking about lightsabers), and a thousand other things. Everytime you're assuming that the crit is confirmed and that its horribly high damage. Since it isn't multiplied like in D&D, crits have a habit of actually doing a SMALL amount of damage, comparitively.

 

[Ranger REG]

True, but my point is that Vitality, in that regard, is usually useless. It doesn't matter if you have 1 or 1,000 vitality, if your Owen Lars or Boba Fett, or if your a PC or a nameless commoner, DEATH (or near death) is always one lucky die roll from happening. Thats it. It ignores defense (most crits happen on the "always hit" 20, and confirming is usually easy except on tertiary attacks), it ignores Vitality, and looks at one number: your 3-18 Con score.

Are you telling me that Owen Lars is not going to take cover? (Probably why he is killed on Tattooine, he didn't took any cover.)

As for being unheroic, that's what risk is all about: no guarantee. The heroes must consciously decided to risk committing a great deed at the expense of his own life. If he has to jump up out of the trench to retrieve his injured buddy in the midst of a crossfire, would be foolish if he dies, but brave if he successfully did it.

Heck, if there is a hero in Star Wars -- at the risk of getting flamed -- it's Anakin/Darth Vader. He risked his own to save his son, and though his adventures ended at least he will die knowing he did the right thing.

And one more thing, I don't know how often does a natural 20 come up in your game session, or the possibility of a crit. Either you guys are extremely lucky, or some of your players cheating.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Let's take, for an example, a 5th level Jedi Guardian padawan. He has a 14 Con, and a 16 Dex, and Weapon Finesse. He'll take the Jedi No-Duh of max ranks in Battle Mind and Enhance Ability. Before the fight, he'll tell the Dark Jedi padawan he is facing to stand down and reject the dark side of the Force, and take 10 on his Jedi Buff Round.

8 + 2 + 10 = 20 for both Battlemind and Enhance Ability, giving him a +3 Attack and +4 Dex, respectively.

His total attack bonus will be: 5 (BAB) + 5 (Dex) + 3 (BM) for +13

His standard Defense will be: 10 (Base) + 5 (Dex) + 5 (Class) for Def 20.

This is pretty high for his level, but we can see that with a +13 attack, he'll succeed on attacks against a clone of himself 65% of the time.

Let's say his GM is having a bad brain day and decides that the group should fight a 7th level Dark Jedi Guardian Knight of some sort. Same stats.

His Def will be 10 (Base) + 6 (Class) + 5 (Dex) for 21. He'll take Lightsaber Defense for 23.

Padawan needs a 10 to hit Knight. 50/50 shot. His lightsaber crits on 19-20, so a 10% chance any particular roll of rolling a threat. Just thinking it through in my head, I think that's about a 5% chance of any particular roll being a successful critical hit. Average damage on his 3d8 Lightsaber is what, 13-14? Just enough to generally reduce Dark Knight to 0-1 WP. If the Padawan has even a 12 Str, his average crit will reduce the Dark Knight to 0 or -1 and Dying. Even if he doesn't, a 13 WP crit is a DC 18 Fort save, which the Knight has a 55% chance of failing.

On paper, not a horrible thing. But reverse the situations ... say it's 6 Dark Padawans vs. 4 Unoriginal PC Knights. You've got something like a 60% chance that a successful critical hit will be scored on a PC on or before ROUND THREE.

Very difficult encounter, and very much a straw man, but this is off the top of my head for illustration purposes. Things are much more varied in a real game, but we're talking about a pretty average Jedi build there.

Not that MDT would be much better. It's just a problem with Jedi. They tend to blow out the balance of the game, and VP/WP isn't forgiving of that in any way.

Which is what Ankh is more or less saying in his defense of VP/WP. It's just sort of annoying that a major part of the films can't be modeled in-game. There's no Jedi-on-Jedi lightsaber duels or combats. There can't be. Yoda Vs. Palpatine? No, as 18-30 seconds in, one of them is dead. A handful of Jedi Masters vs. Grevious? He's tin-cans by round 2.

You can't have any sort of cinematic lightsaber combat. The problem, I think, isn't so much with VP/WP as Defense vs. Attack Bonus and the static 10% threat range of the Lightsaber. There needs to be a different method for bypassing VP. Something not entirely based on the physical die, and more on the static number generation aspect of a character.

--fje

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Which is what Ankh is more or less saying in his defense of VP/WP. It's just sort of annoying that a major part of the films can't be modeled in-game. There's no Jedi-on-Jedi lightsaber duels or combats. There can't be. Yoda Vs. Palpatine? No, as 18-30 seconds in, one of them is dead. A handful of Jedi Masters vs. Grevious? He's tin-cans by round 2.

And here is where you are outright wrong. There ARE Jedi on Jedi duels. Hell, I've run tons of them and they last a good long time. Why? Movement. Duels don't involved standing still and batting at each other...you move, use the terrain to your advantage, etc. If I need to, I can link a lightsaber duel from my Story Hour that lasted a long time. Sure, its storified and there aren't numbers in there, but its still the duel and not stretched out beyond the actual combat(that part of the SH was taken from a PbP portion, so its much more accurate).

And it sure as hell was cinematic. Best lightsaber duel I've ever run/played in. And while others have definitely been memorable and long, that one just sticks out and its the only one I've got in SH form at the moment.

Again, the problem I'm seeing is exaggeration. Maybe you've never seen things work a certain way, but how long have you played the game? Honestly, I can't help but think it hasn't been very long, because if you don't like it, you'll usually stop or alter it to fit your style, and then you aren't playing the Core game that we're having to discuss.

Simply put, my main point is that all the problems and complaints I see about the system have never, ever come up in the multiple groups I've run games for or played in. I say multiple because its different players(PbP and face to face), so it isn't just a style centered around one group. I can see that the style may not mesh with certain people, that's inevitable with anything, but stating that "this cannot happen" just because you've never seen it is just plain wrong.

And hell, if you need a numbers thing to show a long duel...give me about a month, and my KotOR PbP here on ENWorld should have reached a point where we get a really good 1 on 1 duel. They haven't had the chance to reach it yet, but they're working very close to that point.

 

[The Grackle]

Which is fine for those who do. For those who don't its a real pain in the Kiester.

I'm all for a grim-n-gritty, dark game with tactics and stealth, I just wonder if that style rules is compatible with the swashbuckling-space-fantasy that Star Wars is (to me).

I ran a one-shot, multiple Jedi game using Mutants and Masterminds 1e, and it was sweet. It was neither grim nor gritty. The players loved it and said that it had the most Starwarsy feel of any SWRPG they'd ever played (And both of them have Rebel Alliance tattoos, so that's something).

It worked well for a number reasons:

Jedi Powers translate easily into superpowers. I just figured out the powers and let the players buy ranks in whatever they wanted to specialize in. TK, Mind Trick, etc.

Hero Points (and Villain Points) allow you to reroll important saves.

There is a difference between characters and minions. Minions drop easier and don't get crits.

No Hit Points at all- just Damage Saves. This is good for mimicking the movies where no one really shrugs off multiple blaster hits. The players relied on high defenses and Lightsaber deflections.

I did have to work out some amputation rules, though.

You should check it out. I'll even email you my notes if you're interested.

 

[delericho]

As shocking as it might be, some people actually *gasp* want a different style of play. I prefer a dark and gritty game where "any punk with a gun" canbe a threat.

I have nothing against gritty games. True, it's not my favoured play-style, but it's a totally valid style of play. (I would probably argue for the Bab5 low hit point variant rather than VP/WP in a gritty game, but that's not really relevant to the current discussion.)

However, a Star Wars role-playing game should feel like Star Wars, and in Star Wars significant characters just are not killed by punks with guns. The fact that a single critical hit could bring an end to a much-loved character almost guarantees that the incidence of derring-do in the campaign will be reduced, and although that's a valid campaign model, it doesn't fit the source material.

 

[GlassJaw]

However, a Star Wars role-playing game should feel like Star Wars, and in Star Wars significant characters just are not killed by punks with guns. The fact that a single critical hit could bring an end to a much-loved character almost guarantees that the incidence of derring-do in the campaign will be reduced, and although that's a valid campaign model, it doesn't fit the source material.

Well I think d6 SW feels more like SW than the d20 version, but that's another discussion for another time.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

However, a Star Wars role-playing game should feel like Star Wars, and in Star Wars significant characters just are not killed by punks with guns. The fact that a single critical hit could bring an end to a much-loved character almost guarantees that the incidence of derring-do in the campaign will be reduced, and although that's a valid campaign model, it doesn't fit the source material.

Again, a single critical hit canNOT bring a much-loved character to an end. Unconscious, yes, but it is very hard to actually KILL from that. And again, it DOES fit the source material. Stop focussing on the death part, as its overexaggerated to how common/possible it is in the first place.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Again, a single critical hit canNOT bring a much-loved character to an end.

Again, yes, it can.

It would have happened in my last Star Wars d20 game, had I not reminded the DM that, in a surprise round, you only get a single standard action (or attack action, as SW calls it).

Without that, a single critical hit from a Dark Jedi's lightsaber would have killed one of our own Jedi. 4d8 dice of damage, on a good roll, is enough to kill just about anybody. 3d8 can do it, too.

 

[GlassJaw]

Most of the issues people have with the VP/WP system seem to arise from a bad experience with lightsabers in SW. I'd bet that SW played without Jedi or playing an entirely different campaign that uses VP/WP would change people's opinions. Lightsabers + crits + WP = instant death.

There's a reason why there are no crit multipliers in the VP/WP system. If there were, any crit would be an instant kill. Since lightsabers have so many damage dice, it's like they have a built-in crit multiplier already.