Star Wars: Light of the Cauldron

[Talosian]

I'm interested in a Jedi, maybe a member of Yoda's species... or something with extra arms...

Yoda's species would indeed be a pain, because it's incredibly vague and secretive : / Extra arms, on the other hand... I'ma look around for a bit on Wookieepedia, and see what I can find.

EDIT: Multiple arms time! The ones that I found (I chucked a few that were effectively unplayable, but didn't look at any of them very thoroughly): Besalisks, Myneyrshi, Pho Ph'eahians, Codru-Ji, Morseerians, and the Xexto.

Just... please, whatever you do, don't go the route of giving one of these four lightsabers, Ambidexterity, and "Dual"-Weapon Attack. The sheer amount of destruction would end the world. (And make my planned mere dual-wielder feel rather inadequate XD)

I'll confess: this is partly related to how my character sheet works. There isn't a separate slot for putting in racial advantages/ disadvantages, so everything just goes in together.

*cough* GCS master race *cough* :D

Colourblindness and not being able to use screens were an aspect of that TK Sense as well. I will allow that because the Force links all things you have a sense of the energy in the screen or a hologram, so you can get a very low resolution idea of what is there (so a hologram isn't invisible, it's just not clear enough to identify a face unless it's magnified).

Hurrah for screens! :D (I'm currently in the process of confronting myself with the reality that no matter how little sense it makes, it's pretty clear that Miraluka/force vision users are assumed to, by default, only see in a "normal" visual arc : / I'll probably be adjusting the template to reflect this, and possibly adding another level or two of Increased Range or otherwise filling in the template to bring it to around [0], though I'll probably want my character ).

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Honestly, it really doesn't bother me that we don't all have the same view of the Force and what constitutes light side/dark side, and I'm nowhere near invested enough to make a problem of it. As long as we all know what to expect and it isn't punitive (to be clear, your proposed system poses no problem whatsoever in this regard, though the one you mentioned from one of the SW rpgs would have given me life-threateningly severe eye twitches of rage), I can't see how it could really be a big issue.

I do think that there's probably a better way to approximate the benefit that Jedi receive from having the Order around to be their moral medic, but this also isn't all that big a deal. I want to fiddle with so that (in my mind, at least) the rules jive properly with the concept, but I don't need to "win" on this, because it really won't matter that much.

FYI: Your Discworld comparison has finally convinced me that I need to find and read the Discworld series (it's been on the agenda for a long time).

In short, I like the morality system, and I think that the points of contention would be extremely minor in practice (e.g. how often would force lightning honestly be used for an arguably moral purpose? Not often). I'm all in favor of continuing with the Star Wars game.

... but I must admit, the Psi game looks pretty damn cool as well XD I'm curious how player characters would be differentiated, however, with such a major portion of the characters being a standard template (especially since the rest would be 100 points of probably-not-an-adventurer). On the other hand, there're enough different abilities that characters would probably become distinct based on which abilities each player preferred.

If it came down to votes, I'd vote Star Wars, but I'd probably join regardless of the game.

EDIT: Ahwoops. I forgot one of my major comments. In terms of fiddling with the DSP system, it might be worth looking at Horror's bit on Corruption (146-148). Very similar in concept, and has some solidly applicable ideas that might provide a road map for atonement and such.

[LemmingLord]

Good morning! I regret that I am overextended just now and won't be able to join this game.

[Totem]

Originally Posted by Talosian

I do think that there's probably a better way to approximate the benefit that Jedi receive from having the Order around to be their moral medic, but this also isn't all that big a deal. I want to fiddle with so that (in my mind, at least) the rules jive properly with the concept, but I don't need to "win" on this, because it really won't matter that much.

I think I'm going to move it to a bonus on a period of meditation to remove DSP. That seems the best option at this point.

Originally Posted by Talosian

... but I must admit, the Psi game looks pretty damn cool as well XD I'm curious how player characters would be differentiated, however, with such a major portion of the characters being a standard template (especially since the rest would be 100 points of probably-not-an-adventurer). On the other hand, there're enough different abilities that characters would probably become distinct based on which abilities each player preferred.

Concept is thus:
Psychics are naturally occurring and have powers ranging from -30 up to 600 points (averaging the 20-30 points mark). Even with regular tests to spot people with such abilities (following an... incident... in the 1950s it is accepted that such abilities exist, and so kids get tested every could of years in school), most psychics end up lonely and detached from the world around them by default.

Psionics are artificially engineered, and only the combination of the five talents would hold steady together (you could have just one, but that was kind of limited). There are several programs around the world producing psionics, most of them antagonistic to each other. They are all the same sort of age as PCs would be, but some of them have been raised in camps, from birth, and have been training the entire time. Your main advantage: your existence is classified and has been secret enough that no one even knows that you exist, where most of the other programs are known about to intelligence services at least.

The key difference between player characters was that you get activated at the age of 18-21, so you have a formative life in that first 100+50 points, but nothing in terms of actual combat training (unless you took up Karate or Judo as a hobby for instance). That's a lot of difference right there. From there, the template includes several levelled abilities which can be emphasised or ignored as appropriate. And it doesn't include any skill points, so what you choose to focus your initial training on is your choice; even spending the whole 20 points not assigned to military/ intelligence skills, you've got plenty of variety of how to make things work.

And I forgot: by selective breeding or the psionic booster process itself (no one is sure) you get IQ+2 as part of the template.

Originally Posted by Talosian

EDIT: Ahwoops. I forgot one of my major comments. In terms of fiddling with the DSP system, it might be worth looking at Horror's bit on Corruption (146-148). Very similar in concept, and has some solidly applicable ideas that might provide a road map for atonement and such.

Horror being one of the ones that I don't have at present. I'll think on it though.

[the_matrix_walker]

Originally Posted by Talosian

Just... please, whatever you do, don't go the route of giving one of these four lightsabers, Ambidexterity, and "Dual"-Weapon Attack. The sheer amount of destruction would end the world. (And make my planned mere dual-wielder feel rather inadequate XD)

=]

You will have to learn to live with your feelings of inadequacy. :P

[Talosian]

Egads. The balance issues with that have been tormenting me ever since Kromm clarified that it's legitimate rules-wise (if not mathematically). (Warning: Completely irrelevant-to-this-game rules rambling below. EDIT: I added spoiler tags to reduce clutter.)

Spoiler:  

Extra Attack is [25] per level (and would need the Multi-Strike enhancement for a net [30]), while Extra Arms are [10] per arm. Assuming a character that already has Ambidexterity and maxed DWA, the differences are pretty broken as hell:

The Extra Attack route is [20] more expensive, but has some fringe benefits (at a cursory glance, it looks like DWA probably couldn't use on attack for a feint, for example).

The Extra Arms route effectively fulfills the main purpose of Extra Attack at 1/3 the cost. It requires more weapons, and is limited to weapons the user has DWA for, but it's still wildly unbalanced (and it has all the other benefits of Extra Arms to boot).

Given that 5 points of DWA is required for a human to use both arms without Extra Attack, the brokenness seems to stem mainly from the assumption that species with extra arms could learn to use all of them with the same amount of training. It'd be a bit complex, but requiring another "DWA" technique for each extra arm would at least make some headway in balancing it (it'd still be [15] vs [30], and in dire need of balancing, but it'd be a start). Actually balancing it would be a pretty straightforward matter of locking DWA at "dual," and requiring Extra Attack to accompany Extra Arms (which, after accounting for multi-strike, would make Extra Arms only [5] more expensive, which seems quite reasonable). Although to be fair, in the search for real balance, DWA should probably be removed entirely, given that Extra Attack (Single Skill, -20%) is [20], and DWA accomplishes almost the same thing for a quarter of the cost (with the added benefit of imposing a -1 to defenses when both attacks are aimed at the same foe). Sure Extra Attacks can make feints, but that's a small consolation when it costs four times as much...

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But as I said, this is just me being buggered about buggy rules, and has no bearing on this game.

[zoncxs]

PM'd my sheet, my guy can go either way. A jedi of hunter. (or anything!)

[Totem]

Some updates have been made to the first two posts regarding rules and setup, taking into account some comments that have been made so far.

Notable changes:

Addition of Rank to the Jedi Knight Template (note the cost has increased).

Rules for setting up armour added.

Rules for Meditation to remove DSP have been added.

Moral Guidance is now counted as a bonus on the Meditation roll to remove DSP rather than on the WILL roll to avoid getting them in the first place.