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And honestly until they get some XP under their belt Jedi are actually kind of underpowered compared to other options. Do not gently caress with the vibroaxe wookie with your force powers and mysticism.
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Jul 14, 2017 17:20
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jivjov posted:You could potentially wait for the release of Genesys; FFG is putting out a game that's setting-agnostic using the same narrative dice as Star Wars. Full disclosure: I'm not the biggest fan of FFGSW. I think it has either too much or too little held over from WFRP3. And too much Shadowrun thrown in the mix with the massive gear lists. But the system is serviceable, and it should work fine for what we're looking to do. And I'm honestly curious how it works from the other side of the table. E: unseenlibrarian posted:And honestly until they get some XP under their belt Jedi are actually kind of underpowered compared to other options. Are they balanced by the fact that they're basically a death sentence in the setting? If so we'd have to take that into consideration when building it if we wanted to include FaD. ImpactVector fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Jul 14, 2017 |
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Jul 14, 2017 17:23
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Well, yeah, pulling a saber out in public means people in black robes showing up rather fast. Also, starting characters in the vanilla aren't supposed to start with a saber, but get one along the way. Overall, by the time Jedi can do powerful stuff, other classes can pull off some impressive poo poo as well.
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Jul 14, 2017 18:08
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Iceclaw posted:Well, yeah, pulling a saber out in public means people in black robes showing up rather fast. Also, starting characters in the vanilla aren't supposed to start with a saber, but get one along the way. Overall, by the time Jedi can do powerful stuff, other classes can pull off some impressive poo poo as well.
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Jul 14, 2017 18:52
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The generic lightsaber in the other books is basically the statblock one from F+D with a few mods applied, so your "starter" saber as an F&D character is a fair bit shittier. Works okay in their relative wheelhouses-- in AOR and EOTE a lightsaber is an amazing artefact of a dead religion, totally worthy of being the MacGuffin of a multi-session arc, and the representative example is one that would be used by a somewhat storied Jedi. In F&D it's still important but it's part of your day-to-day that you tinker with and it sorta grows with you.
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Jul 14, 2017 18:59
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The main thing with Jedi is that they have the option of spending their XP on force powers, which can be really good (Enhance and Sense especially in lower levels), but still costs XP. The tradeoff is that the actual jedi talent trees are, in comparison, just not as good as the EotE ones, and without spending XP on powers, non-jedi will probably end up going deeper into their tree faster. Jedi would only become "better" at much, much higher XP values, and even then, that "better" is in the quotation marks for a reason. Plenty of non-jedi will stlil be able to murder far more efficiently. In other words, and very thankfully, jedi when you get down to it is an option you pick for it's flavor, not to just be better then anyone else.
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Jul 14, 2017 20:11
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ImpactVector posted:Ah, gotcha. I assumed F&D chars could start with one. Glad it's still pretty balanced. A thing to keep in mind is that starting FaD characters aren't Jedi. They are adepts, ie Force users, sometime wannabe Jedi seeking to emulate the legendary Knights through whatever channel of knowledge they can get, but they are not Jedi.
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Jul 15, 2017 12:54
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ProfessorCirno posted:The main thing with Jedi is that they have the option of spending their XP on force powers, which can be really good (Enhance and Sense especially in lower levels), but still costs XP. The tradeoff is that the actual jedi talent trees are, in comparison, just not as good as the EotE ones, and without spending XP on powers, non-jedi will probably end up going deeper into their tree faster. So the general consensus seems to be that Jedi aren't strictly better than any other job. Does anyone think they're considerably WORSE than any other job at low levels? It seems to me so far that you just do different things with Jedi. You play a Force user if you like being able to do neat mind-tricks or use a bitchin' laser sword. There doesn't seem to be too much to discourage playing one other than you have to keep things on the down-low to avoid Inquisitors. Do many other jobs vastly overshadow Jedi at low levels?
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Jul 15, 2017 14:01
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At low level, Force Users tend to pay for their Force abilities with having less skills to go around, yeah. Upside is their abilities are unreliable but unique in their effects.
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Jul 15, 2017 14:19
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Ehh. Starting off jedi are just as poo poo at most everything as everyone else is. While their trees are weaker, the way certain force powers work can make up for that. Like I said, Enhance and Sense are both amazing early on; that's because they don't require a high force rating. Take Enhance, for example. 10 xp to open it up gives you your force die being added to all Athletics rolls. Then for 5 xp, as you go down the talent tree, you can add it to Coordination. And Resilience. And Piloting. And then BOTH kinds of Piloting. And Brawl. Finally, you can straight up invest your force die into it to permanently boost Brawl...or to permanently boost Agility itself. That's huge! And it comes with a major cost, yes, but it's a cost that's very easy to pay early on when you only have one force die, so it's not all that useful. So naw, I don't think jedi are weaker early on, but I think they do have to make judicious use of their powers to be good. To be frank, for the most part in F&D, jedi trees make use of a lot of filler. That isn't 100% BAD - it's not BAD filler, it tsill makes you stronger - but it is a lot less unique, but again, that's because you're way better off investing some early XP into those good low level powers. If you ignore your force powers...why are you a jedi? So yeah, you probably won't have much in your actual class trees that can match stuff like Gambler's constant dice cheating or the Gadgeteer turning their auto-fire gun into a horrifying death turret - but they in turn have nothing that can match adding straight up two die to the difficulty of any attacks against you, throwing an extra 1-4 die on just about any physical check you can make, creating illusions (hopefully it's real obvious how useful this can be at times), or the general power of Move. Even if you aren't going to be a FORCE WIZARD or whatever, filling up Enhance and Sense adds a lot to your physical and fight-time capabilities. EDIT: THis is in response to Angle, not Iceclaw. ProfessorCirno fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Jul 15, 2017 |
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Jul 15, 2017 19:58
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Odd thought, but is there literally any reason to play D6, d20, or SAGA over Fantasy Flight?
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Jul 15, 2017 22:37
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Covok posted:Odd thought, but is there literally any reason to play D6, d20, or SAGA over Fantasy Flight? If you like the old Legends sourcebooks, maybe? But its not like FFG is hard to houserule poo poo like that for.
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Jul 15, 2017 22:40
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Covok posted:Odd thought, but is there literally any reason to play D6, d20, or SAGA over Fantasy Flight? If you're a giant grognard like my GM who thinks the d6 system is the greatest thing ever and hates the fantasy flight system because players can contribute to the narrative via dice
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Jul 15, 2017 22:41
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jivjov posted:If you like the old Legends sourcebooks, maybe? But its not like FFG is hard to houserule poo poo like that for. That's what I was thinking, yeah. I was listening to some old d20radio stuff to see if they had any good GMing advice (also, Sam Wiwter is always fun) and it is just like night-and-day with SAGA and FF. Everything described sounded so old EU: mandos everywhere, Jedi are Gods, everything is just jedi vs sith and/or a reference to another EU book/comic/game/etc., constant KOTOR, etc. I bet that extends back to. I mean, once I read a D6 sourcebook and was floored by just how "weird" it was with there only being one holocron called "the holocron", Darth Sidious writting a book, the Empire being planned to become a dark side theocracy and just other crazy things. Of course, that stuff is easy to port over. But, really, is it weird to look back and see how much Star Wars has changed. So, yeah, guess I'm not shocked the only worthwhile thing to get from going backwards is old sourcebooks if you can't be arsed to find the individual articles on Wookiepedia. Seriously, though, a book? A paper book? Why was he writting a paper book?
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Jul 15, 2017 22:45
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Azhais posted:If you're a giant grognard like my GM who thinks the d6 system is the greatest thing ever and hates the fantasy flight system because players can contribute to the narrative via dice No gaming is better than bad gaming. If you got 2pm EST off on Sundays, join up in my F+D Weik game, instead. Also, really loving hate the "players should never add to the narrative ever! This is my story and you plebs just need to eat poo poo and die ! Everything is about me" mentality that still exists in some circles.
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Jul 15, 2017 22:46
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Well, sometimes the players are looking for a guided story experience. Like a video game except analog. But yeah, if the players want to contribute and the GM won't let them...that's a big problem.
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Jul 15, 2017 22:55
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jivjov posted:Well, sometimes the players are looking for a guided story experience. While a part of me feels like that falls into "we need the fighter to be boring so the guy who doesn't like the game at all can play" territory, a part of me agrees that may be possible. But, it certainly seems like an odd choice since most GMs aren't great writers and the only thing players ever seem to remember well, in my experience, is when the GM plays to what the player cares about and satisfies that personal gratification of feeling like the big deal in a story. And that later thing is kind of hard if players are passive, trust me.
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Jul 15, 2017 22:58
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Oh I know. I've just GMed for a group that had little experience in RPGs and I basically had to do ALL the story heavy lifting, even when I was actively encouraging them to participate in that sort of thing.
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Jul 15, 2017 23:01
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Star Wars d20 barely exists and is barely known, and also was barely even made. They made the two KotOR games off of it's engine and that's about as far as it went. They just grabbed D&D 3.0 and changed some of the words into star wars poo poo. WotC later made SWSE, Star Wars Saga Edition, and it was better then the d20 game in that it actually existed as a game, but was also heavily flawed, and while it was good at the time, there's no reason to ever go back to it. d6 is weird because it went on loving forever, and they kinda ran out of poo poo to print (remember, it started in loving 1987) so they just kinda...made up their own poo poo. And the poo poo they were making got really popular. So popular, that the poo poo they were kinda just making up became canon...which is why it was sent to Timothy Zahn as "research materials" for his Star Wars trilogy about Thrawn. Yeah, that's right. Star Wars d6 invented the goddamn Expanded Universe. So, yeah. There's still some reverence here and there for d6 Star Wars because, again, it was going on for more then a goddamn decade, and more or less is the origin point for a lot of EU poo poo. I dunno if I'd call it an actual good game though.
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Jul 15, 2017 23:02
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Saga has some good ideas, like a condition track. And talent trees. Not really a better game than FFG though, and it completely breaks down around level 13. Also it would cost a fortune to actually buy it to play it.
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Jul 16, 2017 03:16
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Yeah, Saga had good ideas, but not all of them actually work well together (hello assassin snipers that take out your entire condition track in one shot, hello incredibly weirdly scaling force abilities), and most of the good ideas show up again in D&D 4e, which makes sense, since SWSE ended up being sort of a test balloon for said mechanics. After all, SWSE was released in 2007, more or less as 3.5 was already long past the over-saturation point, and work had already begun on 4e, so it was a pretty convenient time to test those mechanics using SWSE. Also, I feel the need to clarify - I actually have no idea of Star Wars d6 is good or not because I never played it. I've heard bits here and there about jedi being out of whack (what else is new) but can't confirm anything myself.
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Jul 16, 2017 03:41
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Thanks for the input on Jedi earlier, fellows. One additional question: Obligation is tricky. Is there any way to balance the right amount of reward based on the obligation gain? Or does it legitimately not matter in the grand scope of the game? Example: My players' YT-2000 got fuuuuucked up by two wings of TIE-Fighters. They escaped with 1 hull point and had to stop for some repairs. But even patching it up on their own they only restored like 8 hull points. To get the ship up to 100% they need around 8,000 credits and I'm thinking of offering an easy out of just taking more obligation. For a base loan of 10,000 credits, is 5 or 10 obligation more appropriate? And it would just be one player taking the additional "debt" obligation even though the whole party benefits, right?
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Jul 16, 2017 04:24
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FuriousAngle posted:Thanks for the input on Jedi earlier, fellows. Just from a player perspective, getting rid of obligation is way harder than just paying back the loan so ending up with an extra 5 or 10 because I needed to take out a space payday loan would suck. If I was needing cash and looking at an obligation debt I'd rather earn the 10 obligation by knocking over a Hutt's casino for a hundred thousand space bucks and have to dodge the resulting bounty hunters instead. At least then I earned the occasional complication and it would work some decent plot hooks in for the GM.
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Jul 16, 2017 04:49
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Obligation is really something you should decide based on what kind of game you want to play. If you want people to be able to get out from under things then clearing obligation is fine, if you want them to be mired in the underworld then when they clear a certain obligation another one should crop up, and some obligations are integral to a character (like, you're such an adrenaline junkie that you'll never clear that obligation unless serious character development happens.)
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Jul 16, 2017 04:53
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8one6 posted:Just from a player perspective, getting rid of obligation is way harder than just paying back the loan so ending up with an extra 5 or 10 because I needed to take out a space payday loan would suck. If I was needing cash and looking at an obligation debt I'd rather earn the 10 obligation by knocking over a Hutt's casino for a hundred thousand space bucks and have to dodge the resulting bounty hunters instead. I hadn't even thought of adding obligation based on party actions. That adds a whole new level of threat. So pretty much any mission they succeed at is going to give them additional obligation because they're sure to have pissed someone off? Although I guess if they're careful enough they could pull it off without the target of their operation recognizing them? wiegieman posted:Obligation is really something you should decide based on what kind of game you want to play. If you want people to be able to get out from under things then clearing obligation is fine, if you want them to be mired in the underworld then when they clear a certain obligation another one should crop up, Yeah, I'm thinking they'll need to be constantly under a fairly consistent amount of obligation to keep them motivated and tense. I'm just wondering how much is too much and how little is too little. I don't want to overdo or underdo things, especially early on.
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Jul 16, 2017 05:02
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I wrote up a alternate Force tradition for the paladins of adamantine. It's for my Weick game. It's supposed to make them more paladin-like. Benefit: Decrease cost of Heal/Harm and Enhance basic powers and their control upgrades by 5, minimum of 5. Drawbacks (55XP): Conflict generated by Knowing Inaction, Coercion, Unprovoked Violence, Torture, using the Harm power, and Unleash is increased by 2. Covok fucked around with this message at 14:15 on Jul 16, 2017 |
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Jul 16, 2017 06:04
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ProfessorCirno posted:Also, I feel the need to clarify - I actually have no idea of Star Wars d6 is good or not because I never played it. I've heard bits here and there about jedi being out of whack (what else is new) but can't confirm anything myself. In d6 everyone is a Jedi or no one is. The take a bit to get going but they're vastly more powerful than everyone else one that happens. The only thing that even vaguely balances them is the retarded wild die you always roll since if you roll a one with a lightsaber you have a high chance of hurting yourself
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Jul 16, 2017 07:16
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Covok posted:Odd thought, but is there literally any reason to play D6, d20, or SAGA over Fantasy Flight? Is there any reason to play D&D over FATE? Is there any reason to watch baseball over football? Is there any reason to to eat a piece of pecan pie over one of apple pie? Answer: Because that's what you want right now. Sometimes people want a crunchier game with battles fought with miniatures. They like feats and levels and prestige classes. Maybe the GM prefers a less loosey-goosey game or isn't comfortable having to improvise Triumph and Despair all the time. Or the GM and/or players don't feel like buying a whole new collection of books when they already have a pile of older books. Perhaps they just want to play a comfortable game they already know, based on another game they know very well. So yeah, lots of reasons, actually. 
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Jul 16, 2017 07:34
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There's actually no reason to play d20 ever, ever, ever. There's literally just no reason. If you thought of one, guess what: you are incorrect. That is a stupid reason. Do not play Star Wars d20. This is not a "instead of _____" situation. Reskin a different game. Fuckin' homebrew your own game. d20 Star Wars is awful. There's not much of a reason to play SWSE over FFG. I dunno about d6, like I said. So there you go.
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Jul 16, 2017 07:51
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Azhais posted:In d6 everyone is a Jedi or no one is. The take a bit to get going but they're vastly more powerful than everyone else one that happens. The only thing that even vaguely balances them is the retarded wild die you always roll since if you roll a one with a lightsaber you have a high chance of hurting yourself I mean, it is kind of true to the material. The Force just makes you better than people without it, at almost everything. Everything is easy to a Jedi, which definitely drags balance out behind the building and shoots it in the head.
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Jul 16, 2017 07:56
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wiegieman posted:I mean, it is kind of true to the material. The Force just makes you better than people without it, at almost everything. Everything is easy to a Jedi, which definitely drags balance out behind the building and shoots it in the head. You know, it's funny you should say that because the D20 Revised system had an interesting solution to that. For one thing, they had a dual hit point system where you had a Vitality (which represented exhaustion) and Wounds (which was actual bodily damage). If you took damage you took it on Vitality first (representing your narrowly avoiding serious injury), then Wounds when you were out of Vitality. Using Force Powers cost you Vitality. Which meant that you couldn't use your powers willy-nilly, you had to consider whether it was worth making it easier to kill you to perform that trick, and consider if there was perhaps a non-Force way to do the job. Secondly, they made Force Powers skills that drew on the same pool of skill points you got for everything else. Want to get better at Moving Objects? Well you spent your time training in that instead of learning how to fix your droid. This, in turn, made it so non-Force characters could still find niches to be the best in and not get completely overshadowed by Jedi they way they were back in d6 and were again in Saga Edition.
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Jul 16, 2017 08:16
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wiegieman posted:I mean, it is kind of true to the material. The Force just makes you better than people without it, at almost everything. Everything is easy to a Jedi, which definitely drags balance out behind the building and shoots it in the head. It doesn't though. Luke isn't straight up better then the others at like, most things. I mean yeah, he's better with a lightsaber, and he's better at doing pointless front flips every time he jumps, and he certainly is better at using the force to move objects. But that's...kinda it. While Luke is having Daddy Issues, Han and Leia are leading a successful ambush against the shield generator and Lando is taking out the actual Death Star. And incidentally, when Leia isn't leading teddy bears into war, she's a general, or sometimes she's a politician, and sometimes she's strangling a loving hutt to death with her two hands and a metal chain. And when Lando isn't destroying a moon-sized super-weapon, he's running an entire city. And when Han isn't also leading teddy bears into war, he's...I mean, ok, Han's kinda a gently caress up, but that's why we love him, dofus couldn't actually talk his way out of a paper bag. Like, the Force doesn't make Luke a better pilot - the whole point of the end of the first movie is that Luke is already a good pilot, now stop relying on all this other poo poo and do the thing you already know you can do, if you'd just do it. That's the whole point of the Force in general - stop overthinking this poo poo. That's the point of Yoda's teachings, is that they aren't teachings. That's why Yoda say "do or do not," because there actually is no trying, because you can already do all of this, you're just bullshitting yourself into not realizing it. This is, incidentally, precisely why FFG Star Wars is better then the other poo poo. It actually follows the goddamn movies. This whole "jedi are naturally superior" was born of nerds who have to wank off over wizards regardless of the setting, and then that fishtailed into those miserable prequels. It was never about being a jedi; it was always about being a protagonist. Luke isn't better then Leia or Han, they're ALL better then everyone else, because Star Wars is a pulp setting, and they're the heroes.
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Jul 16, 2017 08:24
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TBQH, the prequels work it as well: the Jedi Order is so into its own bullcrap and prophecy and traditions they get utterly wrecked by a shrewd politician playing on the fears of their treasured chosen one.
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Jul 16, 2017 11:59
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I decided to write up a few more of those Force Traditions for my Weik game and lay them out. Find it here. Covok fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Jul 16, 2017 |
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Jul 16, 2017 16:30
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Iceclaw posted:TBQH, the prequels work it as well: the Jedi Order is so into its own bullcrap and prophecy and traditions they get utterly wrecked by a shrewd politician playing on the fears of their treasured chosen one. The prequel Jedi Order is amazing because it's accidentally great. You were never supposed to think they were overly concerned with tradition and too conservative and seperated from the very people they were meant to save - that was never Lucas' intent. They were supposed to still be the semi-generic good guys, so Palpatine seems way scarier. But he's not a very good writer without his editor/wife fixing poo poo for him and not getting credit for it, so he accidentally made the Jedi Order into this paranoid, overly-stratified thing, where all the jedi are reclusive and their edicts meant to protect them from the Dark Side only causes them to fall even faster.
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Jul 16, 2017 21:11
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ProfessorCirno posted:The prequel Jedi Order is amazing because it's accidentally great. You were never supposed to think they were overly concerned with tradition and too conservative and seperated from the very people they were meant to save - that was never Lucas' intent. They were supposed to still be the semi-generic good guys, so Palpatine seems way scarier. But he's not a very good writer without his editor/wife fixing poo poo for him and not getting credit for it, so he accidentally made the Jedi Order into this paranoid, overly-stratified thing, where all the jedi are reclusive and their edicts meant to protect them from the Dark Side only causes them to fall even faster. Funny part is it works MUCH better with the original trilogy with this interpretation because Mr. "Certain Point of View" and Mr. "Won't Train the Only Candidate Without Persuasion" are pretty obviously good intentions with flawed execution personified even then, so adding a history of it helps. Luke only wins specifically because he disregards their advice to kill Vader. When your solution is "tell a kid to murder his father", you are a little screwed up even if there is a coldly logical reason to say it. And the movies run with it pretty reliably too. Just hope they don't screw up the theme in the next movie of course...
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Jul 16, 2017 21:53
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ProfessorCirno posted:The prequel Jedi Order is amazing because it's accidentally great. You were never supposed to think they were overly concerned with tradition and too conservative and seperated from the very people they were meant to save - that was never Lucas' intent. They were supposed to still be the semi-generic good guys, so Palpatine seems way scarier. But he's not a very good writer without his editor/wife fixing poo poo for him and not getting credit for it, so he accidentally made the Jedi Order into this paranoid, overly-stratified thing, where all the jedi are reclusive and their edicts meant to protect them from the Dark Side only causes them to fall even faster. While I'm not going to pretend there isn't some serious flaws with the Prequels' writing, this is one point I'm pretty sure is completely intentional: first with that Jedi archivist in AotC who tells Obi-Wan "Oh, that thing you look for isn't in our achives? Then it can't exist", and second with Yoda mentioning IIRC in RotS that they were all blind to Palpatine's machinations. Well, that and Anakin being a spoiled little rear end in a top hat, because everyone has been telling him he is the chosen one since he is a kid. Oh well. That's my two cents regarding noted space opera serie Star Wars. E: oh and I guess the Clone Wars serie made a decent point for all the order's flaws as well.
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Jul 16, 2017 22:15
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Covok posted:I decided to write up a few more of those Force Traditions for my Weik game and lay them out. They're pretty weik. For real those that is a really good document, good job!
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Jul 17, 2017 01:58
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Does anyone have any suggestions for weird, dangerous things that could be lurking in the Unknown Regions? One of my players has been offered an ongoing job of uncovering the nature of the mysterious threat that Thrawn joined the Empire to defeat, but I haven't decided what that should be yet (I don't really want to introduce the Yuuzhan Vong or whatever Snoke stuff they're hinting at now). Maybe something anti-climactic like Waru, or even some sort of impending environmental disaster without actual malicious intent?
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Jul 17, 2017 23:44
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Unicron
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Jul 17, 2017 23:47
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