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Jedi Reflexes and Sense
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Trispar
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 12:21 am    Post subject: Jedi Reflexes and Sense Reply with quote

Well, I've been stalking the forums for quite some time, but alas the time has come to ask you a question of my own.

I've been tinkering with some house rules for my Rebellion campaign, and I've stumbled upon a conundrum: I want my Force-sensitive PCs to possess a degree of sense-based bonus on certain skill rolls (attack rolls, defenses, piloting rolls, etc.). I wanted it to be more in line with current movie canon, with the Force enhancing Jedi's reflexes unconsciously, even before any training occurs.
I've already implemented a Force attribute in my game, with sense as a normal, defaulting skill and control and alter as advanced skills. I also removed Lightsaber Combat completely. Well, Force powers as a whole are revamped, so no Combat Sense or Enhance Attribute either. Oh, and I use Static Defenses from MiniSix (the whole thing is kind of a MiniSix/REUP/my own thing mashup that started out as some 1e house rules and evolved into something barely resembling other editions).

So, here's what I had in mind:

Sense allows the Jedi to see things before they happen, appearing to have extremely quick reflexes. Apply a bonus equal to the sense skill dice to character’s Perception rolls to determine Initiative, attack rolls, static defenses, pilot skill rolls and vehicle’s Dodge defense if the Jedi is piloting.
Jedi are also much harder to surprise. If the Jedi makes an Easy sense roll, he is not surprised. The difficulty is Difficult if someone else in (sense skill dice)*3 meters radius is the target. The attacker may add his control roll to the difficulty.

Already I'm sensing a problem with the bonus being too high, given that it will be applied almost all the time. A beginning character with 6D Sense would add +6 to all combat skill rolls and defenses (although she would have to put 4D into the Force attribute and another 2D to the Sense skill, leaving her with few dice left). I considered making it half the sense skill dice (rounded up), but that on the other hand could be too low, given how costly being a Jedi is.

So, what do you guys think?

Here is the full document with my house rules if anyone's curious (it's still a work in progress, mind you).
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 12:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I agree it can get up there. An easy solution is to cut back on what it 'sub-consciously' adds to. Init i can see. Reflexive parry/dodges, i can see the pc picking ONE and that's what it applies to Unless they train it up, then each full 2d they apply to sense they get the reflexive bonus to another reflexive skill.
However i would NOT let the thing cybosh getting snuk up on/neutering being surprised..
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Trispar
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 1:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Having the PC picking one thing that the bonus applies to sounds great.

I could even allow them to switch the bonus round to round. Maybe one attack (maybe splitting the bonus between multiple attacks) OR one defense for the round (as I use MiniSix' static defenses, this would simply apply to either Dodge, Parry or Block). This does balance things out a little bit. The Init bonus I'd keep, as it's the most "reflexive" part. I think young Anakin's "Jedi reflexes" didn't apply to piloting only, so I'd rather he could just decide to what to do with his +4 bonus (from Force 4D) for the round.

And regarding being surprised - yeah, I set the bar too low. Still, on screen we rarely see any Jedi surprised. And I really want a kind of "passive Danger Sense" in effect. I could raise the difficulty to Moderate or Difficult (keeping it out of hands of most untrained characters).
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shootingwomprats
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 2:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

You could also just give a flat +1D bonus to initiative and/or defensive skill rolls. This mirrors Phantom Menace when Qui-Gon, while watching Anakin dodging crashed podracers and debris, "he has Jedi reflexes". It is never in relation to an offensive use of a skill only defense. So you could get away with that explanation and mechanic.

You could have the player roll their Sense dice vs an Easy difficulty. If successful they get a +1D die modifier to initiative and/or defensive skill rolls. A variation, if they make the roll, they can add there Sense dice to initiative and/or defensive skill rolls. One final variation would allow them, without making a roll, add their Sense dice to initiative and/or defensive skill rolls.

Another mechanic you could try is they may use their dice in Sense instead of Perception for initiative or the defense skill they are using. No need for a roll, they just make the decision if they want to.

Example: Jo-Jo-Bin has Sense 3D+2 and brawling parry 2D+2. He decides to use his Sense 3D+2 in place of his normal defense skill.
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Last edited by shootingwomprats on Tue Jan 24, 2017 1:34 pm; edited 1 time in total
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MrNexx
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 1:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

You might also go with adding the dice of sense as pips... so someone with 1D Sense will be a touch faster, but a master with 11D Sense will be adding +11, or 3D+2. This would be overridden by any actual force power... so you wouldn't get this AND your full sense attribute if you were using Lightsaber Combat, for example.
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 3:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Trispar wrote:

And regarding being surprised - yeah, I set the bar too low. Still, on screen we rarely see any Jedi surprised. And I really want a kind of "passive Danger Sense" in effect. I could raise the difficulty to Moderate or Difficult (keeping it out of hands of most untrained characters).


Didn't many of those jedi when order 66 seemed to get surprised their troops turned on them? Besides that, we actually didn't see much instances of someone TRYING To ambush / sneak attack a jedi, so the whole "passive danger sense always up" thing is more of a (imo) giving them something that the screen doesn't show they should.

That said, since the POWER danger sense has a base diff of Moderate, shifting a passive (non power use) of it up by +5/+10, might work. OR you could have them add their sense into their search roll to avoid being surprise attacked..
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Trispar
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 6:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I was thinking about Qui-gon vs. Maul's probe droid, Obi-Wan vs. Zam Wessel and Yoda vs. clone troopers (for starters). I'm not sure I see them as maintaining Danger Sense in those scenes, maybe except Obi-Wan. There needs to be some kind of passive warning system in place.

As for the Order 66, well, first of all the Dark Side was clouding their ability to sense the future, so there's that. I think it was a special case of Palpatine's influence and the unfathomable scale of the betrayal.

But yeah, passive Danger Sense at +5 Difficulty sounds fine to me. I don't like hide/sneak being used to actually ambush Jedi. I'd rather potential ambushers used deception, distance and any unfair tricks there are available.

MrNexx wrote:
You might also go with adding the dice of sense as pips... so someone with 1D Sense will be a touch faster, but a master with 11D Sense will be adding +11, or 3D+2. This would be overridden by any actual force power... so you wouldn't get this AND your full sense attribute if you were using Lightsaber Combat, for example.


Yeah, that's what I had in mind in the first place, but I decided against pips in favor of a flat bonus that doesn't change the number of dice rolled. Still, perhaps the dice are the way to go. And yeah, it should be overriden (although I removed LC and other combat-boosting powers from my game, so that won't be a problem).
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 25, 2017 12:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Trispar wrote:

But yeah, passive Danger Sense at +5 Difficulty sounds fine to me. I don't like hide/sneak being used to actually ambush Jedi. I'd rather potential ambushers used deception, distance and any unfair tricks there are available..


So in essence a skill that can be used to surprise everyone, is IYO unable to be used on jedi.. just cause?
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Trispar
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 25, 2017 1:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

garhkal wrote:
So in essence a skill that can be used to surprise everyone, is IYO unable to be used on jedi.. just cause?


That's not what I meant. Sure you can ambush a Jedi if you hide well enough. It's just a lot harder since the Jedi's precognitive abilities can warn him about the danger. And I'd hate for a "mundane" skill to be able to casually counter something like that.

But on the other hand Jedi senses should be prone to failure, and if you fail to sense the danger then you'll regret you didn't put those CPs in search.
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 25, 2017 4:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

But as i have argued before on the threads we have had for danger sense, if you are gonna give everyone that preternatural power, just cause dey be jedi, yo. Then why have a danger sense power??
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 29, 2017 12:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I am of the mind that allowing Jedi extra Perception checks is another way to go about this, tempered by Sense dice like so: For each Sense die the PC has, he or she gets +1p to Perception checks. One could also work in a semi-related Initiative bonus, though it would have to be lower.
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 29, 2017 12:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Welcome to the Rancor Pit, Trispar.

One of the work-arounds I've been doing is doing a secret roll of the character's Sense myself and if it's successful, I'll clue the player in. Example: I had an NPC with a species bonus to hearing. That NPC heard the TIE strikers coming in before any of the other characters. One of the PCs was Force-sensitive and I did the secret roll. I then clued the player in that something didn't feel right and that when she cocked her head, she could hear ion engines approaching in the distance.

Now, the character possesses Magnify Senses, but is relatively untrained in the Force. My player and I consider it more reflexive use right now unless she really tries to use the Force. I know a Force character that has decent dice codes becomes super-human compared to other characters later on, so I'll tend to lean towards leaving things as they are. Plus, I know my one player lurks this forum, so I don't want to give too much away.
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 29, 2017 3:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

crazydanny1 wrote:
Welcome to the Rancor Pit, Trispar.

One of the work-arounds I've been doing is doing a secret roll of the character's Sense myself and if it's successful, I'll clue the player in. Example: I had an NPC with a species bonus to hearing. That NPC heard the TIE strikers coming in before any of the other characters. One of the PCs was Force-sensitive and I did the secret roll. I then clued the player in that something didn't feel right and that when she cocked her head, she could hear ion engines approaching in the distance.

Now, the character possesses Magnify Senses, but is relatively untrained in the Force. My player and I consider it more reflexive use right now unless she really tries to use the Force. I know a Force character that has decent dice codes becomes super-human compared to other characters later on, so I'll tend to lean towards leaving things as they are. Plus, I know my one player lurks this forum, so I don't want to give too much away.

^ This is a novel way of handling it. Roll their dice secretly against the difficulty of sensing or perceiving something, and if they succeed, you can let the PC know his or her senses are tingling in some general way. Like "Your guts and heart are tugging at your consciousness to stop and listen" or "You can feel the faint presence of others approaching" or whatever you can come up with.
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 30, 2017 3:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Wouldn't you rolling for them be kind of an indicator something's up anyway?
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Naaman
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 09, 2017 8:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

How complex of a system do you want?

For ultimate simplicity, you could just substitute the sense skill for any basic perception (attribute) rolls at GM's discretion.

For more complexity, you might try something like taking half of the sense skill and adding it to half of the perception attribute to represent the "Jedi reflexes" (assuming this would yield a higher result than rolling perception).

Another possibility would be to cap the bonus based on the character's perception attribute. For example, with a sense skill of 125,000D, and a perception attribute of 2D+1, the max bonus is limited by the character's perception to +2 or +4 or +2D or +2D+1 (or whatever multiplier you want to use as the limiter... the examples given are based on either choosing +1 per D, +2 per D, 1D per whole D in Per, or, limiting it to the Per attribute itself). This way, the character still must rely on his normal senses, with the force augmenting what is available to him, rather than replacing it or overshadowing it completely.

FWIW, a look at the danger sense power could be of use. This power does not augment any skills, but it does allow the Jedi to take preemptive action before he is harmed. In my estimation, this power is probably what what meant to represent the concept of Jedi reflexes.
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