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Originally Posted by naloth
Yes, I saw how you were using it to adjust how hard it was to parry. If I was doing Star Wars type combat I'd just make it all either short range or largely inaccurate at long range. Short ranges would keep combat more local much like Dune creates a reason to do melee combat. It's much easier to close to melee range that way.
Longer range isn't bad, it just adjusts the focus of the game.
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This is a good point. I do intend for red blasters to be by far the most common. With the previous iteration, this would be an organic consequence - the dwell times (up to half a minute) of hyperblasters made them a poor choice outside of sniping situations, and of course there was cost to consider. Now, higher-spectrum blasters give up some wounding potential, but gain an armor divisor as well as increased range, which may be too tempting - an entire military force using green, blue, or even purple blasters wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility. So, it may well be a good idea to bring back the increased cost for crucibles that produce higher-spectrum beams.
Quote:
Originally Posted by naloth
I should have said Strength based damage. It always struck me as odd that Jedi focused on swinging attacks rather than thrusting if the blade (rather than the pressure used to strike) was what does the damage. Making it based on Strength with a high armor divisor explains that style of fighting pretty well.
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Theoretically, a swing with a cut-through-anything-deathstick is great because it means anything but a glancing hit is going to sever whatever you hit, making it easy to either disable a foe or kill them outright with a single hit. Such a weapon is also capable of striking multiple foes with a swing, which can be useful in certain situations. That said, Jedi seem to put
far more power behind their strikes than would be necessary with a weapon that behaves the way lightsabers do in the prequels (it occurs to me the original trilogy treated them more akin to swords than deathsticks). Sanderson's
Stormlight Archives has an interesting interpretation here. The Shardblades there similarly cut through almost anything (although they have a distinct edge - you can Parry a strike from one with a mundane weapon by focusing on the flat of the blade), and it's explicitly noted that most who use them don't put much power behind the strikes. There's a technique - the lastclap, what GURPS calls a Hand Clap Parry - that exploits this to allow an unarmed fighter to catch a Shardblade swung at him.
Of course, a massless omnidirectional deathstick can potentially get the best of both worlds here, as you can thrust and then shake your hand around a bit (or even do a quick back-and-forth as you thrust) to open up some massive wounds, sever limbs, etc. That isn't an option with my force swords, as they behave more like physical weapons (although they do still have the "omnidirectional" bit going for them).