Slamming people/things into walls with Force Move...

[knasserII 2,557]

I agree. They were likely minions. They are not important. They weren't even a speed bumb. They were a thong to make Yoda look awesome. So minion.

 

I'm not sure Yoda would look awesome in a thong....

Judge me by my thighs, do you? Thighs matter not.

[bradknowles 4,449]

I’m done with this thread. I’ve done the math, twice. I know how I’m going to run it in my game, and I am no longer concerned that the way I’m going to do it will get munchkinized.

You run it your way. That’s your game, your rules.

In my game, I’ll run it my way, thankyouverymuch.

[Daeglan 5,950]

 

I agree. They were likely minions. They are not important. They weren't even a speed bumb. They were a thong to make Yoda look awesome. So minion.

 

I'm not sure Yoda would look awesome in a thong....

Autocorrect...taking conversations in unintended directions...

[Daeglan 5,950]

I’m done with this thread. I’ve done the math, twice. I know how I’m going to run it in my game, and I am no longer concerned that the way I’m going to do it will get munchkinized.

You run it your way. That’s your game, your rules.

In my game, I’ll run it my way, thankyouverymuch.

Wow...captain grumpy pants...You have done the math. You have not however used common sense. If the math does not fit when using nemesis to duplicate the scene. Then maybe the guards in the scene were not the Nemesis in the book and instead were minions. The characters in the scene were not important at all. That to me says minion. Not Nemesis. 

[bradknowles 4,449]

Wow...captain grumpy pants…

I finally get people to stop trying to have any discussion of real-world physics-as-we-know-it in this thread, and now I get someone trying to force their idea of “narrative” down my throat, while also telling me to ignore the guy behind the curtain, and I get called “captain grumpy pants” because of it?

IMO, the real narrative here is that Imperial Royal Guards are pretty bad-ass mofos, and yet Yoda is even more badass and can just walk in and have a good probability of just casually slamming them into the wall and knocking them out, while he goes on to take care of the Super Nemesis.

But the way I’ve done the math, if anyone else were to try that same tactic, it likely wouldn’t work nearly as well for them because they wouldn’t be throwing nearly as many positive dice on their Discipline check, and not nearly as many would be yellow.

They might also be able to do some significant damage if they were able to have success, but they have a much lower probability of that success.

So, excessive munchkinization of that method is avoided by having all combat done with move be opposed checks, either because you’re throwing inanimate objects at someone else and doing an otherwise standard ranged attack, or because the “live” sentient being you’re trying to throw around gets a decent chance to resist being picked up and tossed.

Therefore you can scale that combat appropriately, by giving attributes, skills, and talents to the enemy, and you don’t have to worry so much about the Move-happy players just waltzing all over everyone.

Sure, Force Move is reasonably easy if you’re not trying to harm anyone or anything with it, but once you’re trying to do some harm, it becomes more difficult to achieve. And what I’ve worked out fairly accurately resembles what I’ve seen in Canon.

So, like I said — you run it the way you want in your game, and I’ll run it the way I want in my game.

But I have now had all my questions answered on this topic, and with a minimum of changes to RAW, I have arrived at a solution that I think will work well for me.

Tha-tha-tha-that’s all, Folks!

[knasserII 2,557]

Wow...captain grumpy pants…

I finally get people to stop trying to have any discussion of real-world physics-as-we-know-it in this thread, and now I get someone trying to force their idea of “narrative” down my throat, while also telling me to ignore the guy behind the curtain, and I get called “captain grumpy pants” because of it?

I'm sorry if you felt that discussion of real world physics distracted from what you were interested in. But it was interesting enough to some of the rest of us to debate it and it is very easy for you to skip over posts that don't interest you personally. It takes a moment to go 'Kinetic energy again, hit the down button'. And it's not as if people weren't also giving you a lot of advice about specific game factors in there such as balance implications or how minion / rival / nemesis breaks down. I know I dedicated multiple paragraphs to trying to help you with these things. I didn't have to. Being told what amounts to "my thread, you stop talking" didn't help matters, imo. As to "forcing my idea of narrative down your throat", Narrative vs. Non-Narrative are two approaches to RPG rules. This is a real thing and it's not my idea. For the most part, EotE is a Narrative-based rules system. I was highlighting why that matters to what you were trying to do. You're not interested in design-theory, fine. But this was a thread where you were seeking advice on a rules design / change idea. I tried to answer that with what I consider problems with your approach and spent a fair bit of time writing all this out for you and giving my reasoning behind it. I get that these weren't the answers you were looking for, but they were the ones I had.

 

IMO, the real narrative here is that Imperial Royal Guards are pretty bad-ass mofos, and yet Yoda is even more badass and can just walk in and have a good probability of just casually slamming them into the wall and knocking them out, while he goes on to take care of the Super Nemesis.

I was not using "narrative" in the sense of story, I was using the term Narrative Rules, as was clear from the context. I'm not trying to "force my view" down your throat. I'm highlighting that people very often mistake the minion / rival / nemesis rules as being about power levels, which is not their purpose. As Daeglan points out, the guards in this instance would be best represented as Minions. That doesn't mean that they are not "bad-ass mofos". They could be (but are not necessarily) the same people as would be represented as Nemesis elsewhere. It brings us back to a Narrative rules system approach - the game focuses on the outcome you want and works backwards. In a scene where you have one big bad villain and some faceless, uniform (as in all have the same stats) support, the Minion system would normally be the way to handle those guards. This isn't me talking about "my view", it's the rules approach taken by the game. And more importantly, it results in exactly what we see on screen and which you want to represent. I'm not trying to force anything down your throat, I'm just pointing out that the EotE rules system is already designed to accomplish this and I think you missed it because you took Minion / Rival / Nemesis to be about power, which is a common mistake. They're actually about role in a game. If they're people who should be dispatched without dialogue or differentiation, they're Minions. If they need to be set apart somehow because either they have some special feature or independence (e.g. the Storm Trooper sergeant isn't a "person" particularly, but they are also not rank and file), then they're a Rival. If they're someone who should probably get a death scene, who is a unique individual, then they're probably a Nemesis. The rules system is designed around the idea that faceless non-individuals don't get to linger on injured or pull off last-minute heroics, etc. but that real, named people don't just suddenly die with no warning. That doesn't necessarily correlate with how much threat they are: a minion storm trooper might actually be a lot more threat than that cocky spaceport urchin. But the former is probably either attacking or out of the fight so that everything flows quickly, whilst that loveable urchin who might be no threat whatsoever, still gets that chance to make it to the air-vent and get away.

 

But the way I’ve done the math, if anyone else were to try that same tactic, it likely wouldn’t work nearly as well for them because they wouldn’t be throwing nearly as many positive dice on their Discipline check, and not nearly as many would be yellow.

They might also be able to do some significant damage if they were able to have success, but they have a much lower probability of that success.

So, excessive munchkinization of that method is avoided by having all combat done with move be opposed checks, either because you’re throwing inanimate objects at someone else and doing an otherwise standard ranged attack, or because the “live” sentient being you’re trying to throw around gets a decent chance to resist being picked up and tossed.

I genuinely think this will not work well. If I understand what you're doing, you're making all attack rolls with Move, whether throwing a person or throwing something at them, an Opposed roll. No other damage system in the game (firing blasters, unarmed brawling, lightsabres...), etc. allow the defendent to make it into an Opposed roll. Your reasoning, correct me if I have this wrong, is that you want Move to have a higher damage potential so that it can average 26 points of damage output in the hands of someone very good at it (and I'm going to say again, that's a huge average output). You recognize that this is a balance problem so you are countering it by making it an opposed roll, but you consider the gain to be that the counter applies less the more above the defendant the attacker is. So with Yoda vs. Imperial Guards, it will not be a big issue whilst with Player vs. level-equivalent opponent, you end up back where you started with balanced damage. Correct?

That's going to have two potentially serious negative side-effects. Firstly, it's going to make the Move power much less effective against superior opponents. Your approach to making it far more effective against those weaker than you, is to also make it far less effective against those stronger than you. So the player who often uses Force Move to throw crates at the big bad in your game, is suddenly going to find themselves with a much less viable tactic. The PC who shoots at that same nemesis with their blaster just rolls their normal range difficulty as normal (plus Adversary upgrades). The Force Move user is now having to overcome a Big Bad in an Opposed roll every time to do their normal damage. (And Adversary will really hurt a lot, here).

Additionally, you're giving players a dizzying level of power over those weaker than them. A few Magnitude upgrades and a competent Jedi will be one-shotting multiple rivals because the rivals will probably lose to the PC in the Opposed roll and the PC will be getting their substantially increased damage output.

You talk about adding skills and talents to NPCs so that it will balance, but I don't think that will work. Can you summarize what your actual rule changes are going to be, specifically? I don't think we've had that yet - just descriptions of it.

 

So, like I said — you run it the way you want in your game, and I’ll run it the way I want in my game.

Sure, but to be clear, I'm not (and I don't think Daeglan was) arguing that our rules are better than your rules, so much as arguing that the published rules already accomplish what you asked for.

Edited November 21, 2015 by knasserII

[Daeglan 5,950]

If you look st adversary stats in this game you will quickly realize that what really makes them different is what skin you put on them. Is that an Assassin droid or an aqualish bad ass? How did you describe them? Because that is really what makes the difference. Not the underlying mechanics. This is a good thing. as you can have lots of royal guards in a seen and have the party look bad ass until the last one who is a real challenge. Like the Conservation of Ninja power trope.. What was important in the scene with yoda and palps was Yoda and palps. So having the Royal guards be minions makes sense. The GM wants them to go down quickly. They don't move the story. The duel with Yoda and Palps moves the story. 

[knasserII 2,557]

If you look st adversary stats in this game you will quickly realize that what really makes them different is what skin you put on them. Is that an Assassin droid or an aqualish bad ass? How did you describe them? Because that is really what makes the difference. Not the underlying mechanics. This is a good thing. as you can have lots of royal guards in a seen and have the party look bad ass until the last one who is a real challenge. Like the Conservation of Ninja power trope.. What was important in the scene with yoda and palps was Yoda and palps. So having the Royal guards be minions makes sense. The GM wants them to go down quickly. They don't move the story. The duel with Yoda and Palps moves the story.

Even if you still want them to be a threat - and minions certainly can be - you don't want them to have the nuance and depth that a Nemesis does. Can you imagine how dramatic the Yoda v. Palpatine duel would have been if one of those guards had kept getting back up and struggling on. There's a crack and his arm is broken (a critical hit) and Yoda turns back to face Palpatine. Then the guard cradles his weapon against his body and gets a few more shots off at Yoda (2 Setback Dice penalty). Yoda turns away from Palpatine for a few moments and kicks the nameless guard around a bit more whilst trying to dodge Palpatine's lightning. The guard is now mostly finished off. Yoda does some more fencing with Palpatine. But that one guard still has a couple of strain points left, they get up and shuffle over to the battling masters and joins in with a few body shots from the side at Yoda... Nope, terrible scene. You want minions to simulate a dramatic endgame battle like this. They're up or they're down. Not limping around with half of their 15 WT left and a status effect. IMO.

[OfficerZan 185]

Guys, maybe we can just accept differences in play-style and respect one another enough to not belittle our choices in running our games? Lately, these forums are plagued with ego fueling arguments that go nowhere. As usual, why should you care what someone far away, or even nearby for that matter, thinks of how you play your games?

That said, could we also maybe agree that F&D is a new line with almost no real material yet and that in the future we may see splats with Signature Talents or other "high power level" effects or powers that can capture the Hollywood level of badassery that some require written mechanics for and until then hand-waiving and minionizing is a good alternative?

Edited November 21, 2015 by OfficerZan

[vilainn6 306]

bradknowles, on 20 Nov 2015 - 01:07 AM, said:

 

Daeglan, on 19 Nov 2015 - 10:28 PM, said:

Also resisting force checks can only be done by significant NPCs and PCS. So those Royal guards do not get to resist. They do get the 1 difficulty for being silhouette one.

The Royal Guards are Nemesis-class NPCs. Check the page I quoted.

Moreover, the resistance thing is only for non-combat checks. These are combat checks, which means they would definitely be opposed.

 

 

In the rules, the resistance check is only to see if the power will affect the target or not, not the actual attack.

[knasserII 2,557]

bradknowles, on 20 Nov 2015 - 01:07 AM, said:

Daeglan, on 19 Nov 2015 - 10:28 PM, said:

Also resisting force checks can only be done by significant NPCs and PCS. So those Royal guards do not get to resist. They do get the 1 difficulty for being silhouette one.

The Royal Guards are Nemesis-class NPCs. Check the page I quoted.

Moreover, the resistance thing is only for non-combat checks. These are combat checks, which means they would definitely be opposed.

 

In the rules, the resistance check is only to see if the power will affect the target or not, not the actual attack.

In the panel on page 283, FaD, it states that the GM can make the activation of a Force power an Opposed roll for powerful / significant NPCs (it actually says Nemeses or plot-important named Rivals) or if the target is a PC, but specifically states this is only done "if it is not already an Opposed check or a Combat check". As striking someone with Move is already a combat check then by the rules, bradknowles' statement is incorrect - it would actually never be an Opposed check according to the rules.

N.b. I am applying what is printed in FaD to this discussion, but I think that's reasonable.

Edited November 24, 2015 by knasserII

[vilainn6 306]

The Némésis should get a chance to resist your attempt (resilience vs your discipline I think in the rules) to grab him before you get  to aim and throw him at a wall  (making the attack check) That what I mean by "see if the power will affect the target"

Edited November 24, 2015 by vilainn6