You want to up the damage of lightsabers to put them more on par with blasters, but I just thought of this which you might consider. Lightsabers, while doing less damage, have the advantage of maneuvers[Jedi Academy training Manual] as well as the basic block/deflect/redirect talents. This makes the lightsaber both offensive (and not unerpoweredly so) as well as defensive; whereas a blaster cannot be defensive in any context.
I wanted to up the damage on lightsabers to keep them on par with vibroaxes. I agree that its hard to knock a blaster bolt out of the air with another blaster bolt, defending oneself with a gun is easier now that they threaten ten squares. Only the extremely brave/foolish or Jedi charge at someone pointing a gun at them. In some circles thats called a suicide charge. Cause you know, chargee dies at the end. From being shot. Repeatedly.
I just think this is absurd (nothing personal). An average lightsaber blade is only a meter long. Force pikes that extend reach are fine, but a regular lightsaber is not long enough to bypass a whole square and into the one beyond.
Your quite right, a lightsaber alone isnt long enough to reach a whole ten feet. It's blade is only a little over a meter in length with a hilt adding another foot+ or more. That said its usually connected to a being with a body and arms that reach in total about eight or more feet in length. I'm not so sure its absurd to give a lightsaber reach. I could be wrong. I don't really care, I'll let you guys haggle it out amongst yourselves.
Did you mean you get +1 on other damage rolls for each Martial Arts I, II, or III? You contradicted yourself, so I wanted to be sure.
I did? I'm sorry I'm a little ill and on a bunch of different meds right now. A normal human's fist does 1d4 in the regular rules, in mine a fist does 2d4 without any additional training. 2d6 with MA I 2d8 at two and so on. When you get better with kicking people in the nuts your damage goes up about four points max in game terms, so every step you get above 2d12 adds 1d4 damage. A normal human with MA I and a sword would do 2d8+Strx1.5 +1(from MA I) and if he gets disarmed he does 2d6+Strx2
Well, there are a few possible explanations for this that would allow for the knife through butter effect. 1) Vader's armor is made of lightsaber resistant material (Phrik alloy etc.), which is plausible because it was kind of his thing to go out and hunt Jedi. 2) Luke was only going for a feint-like maneuver, and so the point of the strike was to quickly hit and retreat the blade. 3) The move was a shiim, described as a minute wound made out of desperation (in this case) or to disable an opponent.
Excellent points! Wookiepedia seems to think that Vader's armor is mostly durasteel and a Beskar gauntlet which isn't all that resistant to lightsabers to me. Your second point is one I hadn't considered. In my eyes after Vader says "Don't let yourself be destroyed as Obi Wan did!" Daddies little jedi tapped the dark side. Enraged at the death of his mentor he knocks aside Vader's lightsaber and all out attacks. They trade a few blows and then Vader makes a critical mistake he swings wide and exposes his shoulder chest and side to Luke. Luke wails on him cause its his only chance to survive the encounter. Hits him good! Crit, max damage! Should have killed anyone but daddy dearest is made of sterner stuff. Once Lukey sees this he tries to run out onto the platform in desperation only to have his hand cut off. But we see things differently which is what makes life fun.
Also, on a more opinionated, yet valid, note: lightsaber blades are relatively mass-less. Yes, they have the minute mass of particles, but the only mass that made any difference was that of the hilt. This is the reason why you don't see every common thug going about wielding a lightsaber. If the blade had mass like that of a regular sword/vibrosword, it would be no more difficult to wield than its technological predecessors. If it is the case that the blade has (relatively) no mass, the slightest movement of the hilt (much easier to move when the weight is concentrated in roughly a 1 foot long cylinder) changes the position of the blade, most likely causing severe damage to oneself or one's environment.
I think we agree on almost all points except the one that doesn't really matter. I think a thug who could afford an insanely effective tool as a lightsaber would have one. A little B&E? Slice right through that door with ease. Street fight? Flail around with that flashlight and its an almost guaranteed win. Except they are prohibitively expensive and rare so that only a few people know how to really make them. I think your absolutely correct when you say I think it wouldn't be a whole lot different than wielding a regular sword effectively. Which is to say very very difficult. I'm a bit of a weapons enthusiast and have been in some sparring sessions with wasters and practice blades, I'm not half bad with one either, my sensai is decidedly better. He was in his middle fifties and is about 8 inches shorter than me. In a few maddeningly and frighteningly short moves he had me disarmed and in a real sword fight I'd have been dead. I'm ok, maybe better than some in a fight so I'd fare about as good as a common thug. A master would have removed the threat with very little effort. I think a lightsaber is retardly dangerous. Every single bit of that glowing meter+ has about the same cutting power as atomic razor blades. Light it up and miss when you go to scratch your head? Dead man. Drop it when its on? You probably just lost an arm. Its like waving around a stick of short range dynamite that could go off at the slightest wrong move. But does it have mass? Sir Guinness was told to pretend the swords where very heavy, and every Original Trilogy fight they seem to have mass attached to them. They would have to. Imagine a very strong piece of wire attached to a foot and a half handle. Every time your opponent controls the end foot of your weapon he has you by the short hairs, and their is very little you could do about it. It would be impossible to control, and a lightsaber resistant weapon would be a much better option as described with skilled users.
True, one might be able to pull off a fencing-like fighting style, but because a Jedi has other talents that he can call upon, it might not be the most advantageous. Indeed, Dooku's style is much like fencing with conservative parry-movements and ripostes. Yet, he must defend against opponents using a different technique, so he must expand basic fencing techniques to a larger offensive/defensive area.
Dooku's style was like fencing but not like it enough to do him any good. Where he a true fencer and the blade as cutty as they make it seem he should have been thrusting all over the place and killing a whole lot of Jedi. A lunge from a weapon like that would have been decisivly advantageous and most likely fight winning every time. Maul doesn't seem all that bright to me, but Jinn and Obi are almost worse. When he activated that silly lightstaff they should have stayed out of his (now considerably shorter)reach and stabbed the crap out of him. Deflecting with a two meter deathstick would have lost him a limb if his opponents had known what they where doing. That's just my two sense though, I've been wrong before.
So if I started at 2d6 and upgraded to 2d8, 2d10, and 2d12 with MA I, II, III and then get upgraded again with the Teras Kasi feat/talent combination, I would go up to 2d12+1d4? And were I to go up another step, the damage would increase again to be 2d12+2d4?
If your medium your dmg starts at 2d4 regularly MA I its 2d6 and so on. Other than that your right on the credits.
I may be mistaken, but following the general trend of the house rules, what I think that means is that if the damage exceeds the threshold by less then ten you do go down the condition track, but if it exceeds it by ten or more, you go down the condition track and in addition you get a persistent condition that only surgery or the Force can fix
This. Sorry I didn't make that more clear.
