Some doubts on Lightsaber Mods

[WickedWicks 7]

Hello all! I'm back with another noobish question to my fellow Jedi.

 

How exactly do I install modifications to the Ilum Crystal that comes with the standard Lightsaber?

 

If I understand correctly, due to the discount on tests on my own saber, the first mod has a difficulty of 1, the second 2, third 3, and so on. But isn't it a bit ridiculous after some point? I thought I would eventually be fighting with the "complete" saber, but I doubt I will succeed on difficult 4+ and after each failure I can't attempt to install said mod ever again.

 

I thought wielding such elegant weapon would make me unstoppable, but in reality I'm jealous over the Bounty Hunter's Auto Fire insanity!

[Absol197 5,296]

You have the mechanics of modifications correct.  However, fret not!  I come bearing a house rule that may save you! 

Instead of INCREASING the difficulty for each mod, I UPGRADE the difficulty, and make it so that you require a Despair to eliminate a mod from your attachment  (crystal or otherwise).

I like this better, as it still makes it hard to get all your modifications, but it's not Impossible (literally; using the normal rules, even on your own personal saber, those last two mods would have an Impossible difficulty to install).

[NakedDex 2,611]

You're making delicate alterations to a highly finessed system revolving around a rare crystal. It stands to reason that any changes made will make further changes more difficult to complete them without damaging other parts or altering the system negatively. Three mods on an Ilum crystal will get you -1 Crit and two +1 Damage, leaving you at a base 8 with crit 1 and Breach 1. That's still pretty difficult to deal with given that Breach bypasses so much soak.

Lightsabers aren't supposed to make you unstoppable, they're just a tool, like any other. They have their speciality in the same way an autofire gun would, but it's horses for courses. You won't always be able to wander in somewhere with a heavy machine gun, but your holstered saber might slip through a crowd a lot easier.

[WickedWicks 7]

 

39 minutes ago, Absol197 said:

You have the mechanics of modifications correct.  However, fret not!  I come bearing a house rule that may save you! 

That seems more fair! I will have a word with my DM, we really thought the Lightsabers would cause more damage. (We were actually adding Brawl to the damage total and it was "ok damage" to us)

 

38 minutes ago, NakedDex said:

You're making delicate alterations to a highly finessed system revolving around a rare crystal. It stands to reason that any changes made will make further changes more difficult to complete them without damaging other parts or altering the system negatively. Three mods on an Ilum crystal will get you -1 Crit and two +1 Damage, leaving you at a base 8 with crit 1 and Breach 1. That's still pretty difficult to deal with given that Breach bypasses so much soak.

Breach is indeed strong, but right now Auto Firing sevral groups of minions at once is crazy effective, and can be done from Long Range (scope). I will bet in the nasty Crits, but raw damage is not there yet.

 

38 minutes ago, NakedDex said:

Lightsabers aren't supposed to make you unstoppable, they're just a tool, like any other. They have their speciality in the same way an autofire gun would, but it's horses for courses. You won't always be able to wander in somewhere with a heavy machine gun, but your holstered saber might slip through a crowd a lot easier.

Yes, I agree. My main grip with it is that my weapon will never be "whole", since I can't possibly use all my mods and such, other weapon choices can hope to see their full potential. I can't even lend my weapon to the team mechanic like the BHunter did.

And my group isn't really concerned with subtlety at the moment, we even considered using the flashy lightsabers as more risky than the rifles.

 

Thanks for your inputs! 

Edited January 11, 2018 by WickedWicks

[Daeglan 5,950]

1 hour ago, WickedWicks said:

Hello all! I'm back with another noobish question to my fellow Jedi.

 

How exactly do I install modifications to the Ilum Crystal that comes with the standard Lightsaber?

 

If I understand correctly, due to the discount on tests on my own saber, the first mod has a difficulty of 1, the second 2, third 3, and so on. But isn't it a bit ridiculous after some point? I thought I would eventually be fighting with the "complete" saber, but I doubt I will succeed on difficult 4+ and after each failure I can't attempt to install said mod ever again.

 

I thought wielding such elegant weapon would make me unstoppable, but in reality I'm jealous over the Bounty Hunter's Auto Fire insanity!

Don't forget you can add your force rating on your own saber. So as you go up in force rating you can continue to add mods. even though the difficulty goes up.

[WickedWicks 7]

Just now, Daeglan said:

Don't forget you can add your force rating on your own saber. So as you go up in force rating you can continue to add mods. even though the difficulty goes up.

I didn't know about this one! Where can find these rules?

[Daeglan 5,950]

force and destiny 196. side bar.

[WickedWicks 7]

4 minutes ago, Daeglan said:

force and destiny 196. side bar.

NOW WE ARE TALKING BOYS!

 

I will re-read the whole chapter to see if I missed any other box, but goddam, couldn't they just say this upfront? 

 

Thank you so much! 

[Daeglan 5,950]

They do. In the sidebar. which is a specific rule for PCs

They do the same for resisting force powers.

[awayputurwpn 7,720]

Also, the Difficulty & price increases are per mod, not per attachment.

[WickedWicks 7]

3 minutes ago, awayputurwpn said:

Also, the Difficulty & price increases are per mod, not per attachment.

This one was known, I've thrown away a feel attachments to get the mod I wanted, can't do this with the crystal though haha

[Daeglan 5,950]

ummm mods and attachments are not the same thing. mods go on attachments.

[Daeglan 5,950]

also mods do not take up hardpoints. only attachments do

 

[NakedDex 2,611]

16 minutes ago, WickedWicks said:

 

Yes, I agree. My main grip with it is that my weapon will never be "whole", since I can't possibly use all my mods and such, other weapon choices can hope to see their full potential. I can't even lend my weapon to the team mechanic like the BHunter did.

And my group isn't really concerned with subtlety at the moment, we even considered using the flashy lightsabers as more risky than the rifles.

 

Thanks for your inputs! 

In fairness, auto-fire isn't a great comparison. Auto-fire rules are a bit... well it's very easy to make an auto-fire weapon desperately overpowered. Thing is, a good mechanics roll can build you a great ranged weapon, but there isn't really a better engaged range weapon than a saber. It's just a different speciality. Wait until you meet a guy with 8 soak, 3 defence, and a gunnery weapon, and your auto-fire buddies can't land a thing on him. That's your time to shine.

Also, see if you can spend some time finding a Philaxian Phase Knife in your game. It's one of the best little purchases I've made for my character, and really helps in those times when taking out a saber might be risky, but you want to... get your point across...

[Magnus Arcanus 559]

1 hour ago, WickedWicks said:

Breach is indeed strong, but right now Auto Firing sevral groups of minions at once is crazy effective, and can be done from Long Range (scope). I will bet in the nasty Crits, but raw damage is not there yet.

You will never match the damage potential of lightsaber against an autofiring weapon, especially the bigger, heavier ones*. My best recommendation is not to try. Autofire is one of the more contentious mechanics in this game and can very easily be abused.

*the caveat would be perhaps some sick Ataru Striker build that focuses on Saber Swarm.

 

[WickedWicks 7]

21 minutes ago, NakedDex said:

In fairness, auto-fire isn't a great comparison. Auto-fire rules are a bit... well it's very easy to make an auto-fire weapon desperately overpowered. Thing is, a good mechanics roll can build you a great ranged weapon, but there isn't really a better engaged range weapon than a saber. It's just a different speciality. Wait until you meet a guy with 8 soak, 3 defence, and a gunnery weapon, and your auto-fire buddies can't land a thing on him. That's your time to shine.

Also, see if you can spend some time finding a Philaxian Phase Knife in your game. It's one of the best little purchases I've made for my character, and really helps in those times when taking out a saber might be risky, but you want to... get your point across...

 

10 minutes ago, Magnus Arcanus said:

You will never match the damage potential of lightsaber against an autofiring weapon, especially the bigger, heavier ones*. My best recommendation is not to try. Autofire is one of the more contentious mechanics in this game and can very easily be abused.

*the caveat would be perhaps some sick Ataru Striker build that focuses on Saber Swarm.

 

So it wasn't just me getting jealous after all! Haha

 

Thanks for your tips guys, you helped me and my group a lot!

 

And I will check out that Phase Knife

[SEApocalypse 4,443]

Imho autofire weapons will never match the lethality of lightsabers either. Those crit builds with lightsabers are amazingly one-shot killers. Get passed the defense talents like parry, land a single hit with damage and the fight can be already over. This is something rarely achieved with autofire weapons which usually needs multiple hits. Now imho the base damage of most autofire weapons is to high and things like clumbersome are way to easy mitigated, but that is not an inherent issue with the autofire quality, but with specific weapons. 

There is as well this general trend of not giving sniper rifles enough penetration power … well outside of the verpine ones which come with an outrageous price tag. 

 

And now to something completely different: The topic at hand.
The checks for fully modding your lightsaber are actually quite reasonable for one reason: The scaling of difficulty dice vs ability dice. Assuming equal amounts of ability and difficulty dice you get higher chances of success the more dice are involved. If you roll 500 ability vs 500 difficulty dice you reach a 99.8% chance of success and a just as high chance for threat. The dice system is balanced around the idea of success with threats on higher skill levels. Considering that you can add your force dice you don't even need especially high mechanic skill levels to fully modify your lightsaber successful. Especially as using darkside pips should be a no-brainer for checks like this.  With a force rating of 3 and int 2 it becomes nearly impossible to fail even a a check with a base difficulty of formidable, because you get so many pool modifications based on the thing being your lightsaber. Earlier with just FR1 it is a little bit more tricky, but this is fully intentional. 


 

[DaverWattra 535]

Honestly, I think both modded lightsabers and RAW autofire hugely reduce the fun quotient of this game's combat system. NPCs go down extremely fast in the first place. I don't see the fun in shortening combat to one or two rounds.

[SEApocalypse 4,443]

If those weapons shorten combat to one or two rounds AND you don't like that then your GMs encounter design may in need of some work, because most certainly even doing about 5000 damage per turn has not stopped our combat to take more than 2 turns … or being a moment of high tension. It just raised the stakes and tension, it just gave that particular episode a war movie atmosphere. 

[SFC Snuffy 809]

I think lightsaber scaling is a pretty good design. I don't know if the OP is playing an entry-level character or not, but I don't think it's unreasonable for a learner's lightsaber to be less powerful than a Master's. As you learn more of the mysteries of the Force (i.e. increase FR & relevant skills), you are able to act as a channel for the Living Force and make your 'saber a more effective tool for the Will of the Force.

I think I'd be more disappointed if my entry-level lightsaber never got any better.

[WickedWicks 7]

20 minutes ago, SFC Snuffy said:

I think lightsaber scaling is a pretty good design. I don't know if the OP is playing an entry-level character or not, but I don't think it's unreasonable for a learner's lightsaber to be less powerful than a Master's. As you learn more of the mysteries of the Force (i.e. increase FR & relevant skills), you are able to act as a channel for the Living Force and make your 'saber a more effective tool for the Will of the Force.

I think I'd be more disappointed if my entry-level lightsaber never got any better.

I'm at 300xp now, we have quite a few sessions in.

 

And don't get me wrong, I love that  I have to "attune" with the crystal to make it stronger (now that I understand how it works). But I hate that a failure in this test means that I've lost the crystal's full potential. It is a dangerous gamble that is permanent, not quite my cup of tea. 

[SFC Snuffy 809]

17 minutes ago, WickedWicks said:

I'm at 300xp now, we have quite a few sessions in.

 

And don't get me wrong, I love that  I have to "attune" with the crystal to make it stronger (now that I understand how it works). But I hate that a failure in this test means that I've lost the crystal's full potential. It is a dangerous gamble that is permanent, not quite my cup of tea. 

What does "permanent" mean to you? You might have to quest to find another crystal? 

It might be inconvenient in the short term, but opportunities for adventure are a good thing, right?

[WickedWicks 7]

27 minutes ago, SFC Snuffy said:

What does "permanent" mean to you? You might have to quest to find another crystal? 

It might be inconvenient in the short term, but opportunities for adventure are a good thing, right?

The idea of discarding a crystal to min-max another is just wrong to me. I want to be attached to the saber, not force myself to discard one because I got unlucky in the dice roll.

 

I would like it more if I had to wait a long period before attempting to install a failed mod again (on the crystal). If the saber had more parts to balance its power and left the crystal as a "super special, can't break" it would be nice. Heck, I would trade all this dice rolling into expending XP on the crystal in order to attune with it.

[SEApocalypse 4,443]

3 hours ago, WickedWicks said:

I would trade all this dice rolling into expending XP on the crystal in order to attune with it.

If that is how you want it then make it. It's an RPG everything can and should be adjusted on your table. At first I had the same thought as you, that replacing a crystal with another one feels wrong and that crystals should be able to modified as often as the player chooses, but than I realized that getting new crystals was not THAT unusual even for the jedi who had a sentimental attachment to their crystals AND that you can split mechanics and narrative just fine as well. You can just spend 10,000 credits and narrate this as extensive work and restoration on your crystal to cleanse it of past modifications and start with a "fresh" crystal. For the mechanics it is rather irrelevant how you narrate this really. 

So, if your GM agrees, you can keep your previous crystalline friend while still trying to mod it again. 

 

And as mentioned, the chances to fail your checks are rather low if you just wait long enough for your force rating to rise to 2 or 3. 

Edited January 12, 2018 by SEApocalypse

[DaverWattra 535]

19 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

If those weapons shorten combat to one or two rounds AND you don't like that then your GMs encounter design may in need of some work, because most certainly even doing about 5000 damage per turn has not stopped our combat to take more than 2 turns … or being a moment of high tension. It just raised the stakes and tension, it just gave that particular episode a war movie atmosphere. 

Well, I'm the GM.

I like one-on-one lightsaber battles versus dark-siders; I think those are a big part of the feel of the movies, and I want my Jedi PCs to have that experience.

How do you make those last more than a couple rounds if the PCs have fully modded lightsabers? Give all your Nemeses WT 30, ten ranks of Parry and four ranks of Durable?