Parrying blaster shots..a new angle

[ZzaphodD]

I have earlier tried to adress the rather odd fact that parrying one blaster shot is as easy as parrying 1000, ie that parrying blaster shots gives you a static defence no matter how many shoots at you. This combined with the bucket of dice the Jedi roll for defence makes this a bit boring. However its the illogical nature of this defence that bugged me the most (the same applies to parrying close combat attacks, but usually you are not attacked by as large number of foes as can easily shoot at you). I was working on a system where you could parry up to your Sense number of shots per 'parrying action'. Still powerful and in most cases it wouldnt make any difference, but at least you cannot walk right into 100 stormtroppers laughing at them.

Just now, while I was putting my son to bed, it came to me. The problem is twofold. One is the issue with parrying 1000 shots per round, another is the mechanic of parrying in itself. As it is now the 'target number' for parrying is the shooters attack number. This is a very weird way of doing this. If Gallandro shoots a Jedi up his nostril the blaster shot shouldnt be harder to parry than if a bumbling stormtrooper happened to get an accidental hit. The difficulty of parrying a blaster shot should be a fixed difficulty modified by the number of shots fired at the Jedi.

Still working on the details, but I propose that the basic difficulty to parry a blaster shot is Easy. For each additional shot after the first fired at the Jedi in the same round a -2 penalty is applied to the parrying roll. So for example, if the Jedi rolled 16 to parry (TN 10) and was hit 5 times, he would parry the first four but fail to parry the last shot. This system needs only one parrying roll, and after that its easy to subtract the -2 penalty for each successive attack that hits. When the parrying roll goes below 10 the jedi fails to parry.

A jedi might combine Dodge with Parrying to be more effective in his defence. The Dodge will lower the amount of attacks that hits the Jedi and therefore needs to be parried.

Edit: The actual numbers can be altered to suit you view of how effective parrying blaster shots should be. When playing with our earlier GM parrying each blaster shot was a seperate action, making it much harder to parry lots of shots. One way of simulating this would be to only allow Sense to be used for parrying blaster shots.
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[Ankhanu]

That could work... I agree that parrying many shots should be harder than parrying one... but I'm not sure that this version is appropriate. The main thing is that making the base difficulty Easy is that it is too... well, easy to parry a shot (but you did address this in your edit). I don't like the idea of a fixed value either; it cheapens the differences in skill level of opponents. What's it matter whether you're being shot by a nervous henchman or a Dark Trooper when each is just as likely to get through your defense??

Really, the easiest mechanic for reducing the effectiveness of parrying blaster bolts (or taking on lots of non-ranged opponents) is to treat each parry as an action, each incurring a MAP. You might find that a Jedi would change their tactics pretty quick in that case. Of course, this idea could gimp the Jedi a bit much... you could use an idea like the one you proposed, in which the Jedi's Sense or Lightsaber skill level could be a basis for the number of attacks, ie. if you have a Sense of 4D, you can parry attacks in groups of 4 as a single action; 3 blaster shots would count as one action, 5 would count as 2, 10 would count as three, etc., each action incurring MAPs as normal. This would hinder the uberness of the Jedi battle-tank, while not gimping it below what is setting appropriate. Just a thought.




<tongue-in-cheek>
Maybe you should scrap playing WEG Star Wars and just completely rewrite a rulebook... is there a rule that you DON'T want to change in d6??
</tongue-in-cheek>
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[garhkal]

Hows about your LS parry is effective against 1 incoming bolt per d in control. Each bolt AFTER imposes a MAP as if all bolts were being redirected (so cont of 5 means you can parry away 5 bolts no prob. BUT if you et shot at a 6th time, ALL 6 bolts incur a MAP.
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[ZzaphodD]

[ZzaphodD]

[ZzaphodD]

[ZzaphodD]

[Bren]

ZzaphodD proposes a rules tweak that a Jedi can parry up to sense D shots as a single action and each additional group of sense D shots is an additional action with corresponding MAPs.

I haven’t had a problem with 1000 or even 100 blaster shots directed at a single Jedi, but in theory I can see the issue. And even if only 10 or 20 shots are aimed at the Jedi, it seems reasonable that parrying would become more difficult. Now this could be accounted for with some system of combined actions, but the RAE rules weakened the efficacy of combined actions.

I think what ZzaphodD proposes has the virtue of being reasonably simple, weakening Jedi vs. many opponents without totally eliminating their ability to fight in a large battle like what we see in the Clone Wars cartoons. I think I like it.

I would use Sense rather than Control, since it seems reasonable that the number of attacks blocked is related to the Jedi’s ability to sense the attack.

BTW we play that the amount of damage from a blast that a Jedi can block is limited by the LS damage (i.e. typically 5D + Control dice). This came out of a Dark Horse comic of Luke parrying a blaster cannon shot and an in game situation where one of my players wanted to parry a AT-ST blaster cannon with her lightsaber. With this addition and ZzaphodD’s rules tweak, Sense governs how many attacks a Jedi can parry and Control governs how powerful a blaster shot a Jedi can parry.

[ZzaphodD]

[jmanski]

Parrying a blaster bolt in my mind means not being hit by it, akin do dodge- which means you only swing at the ones that will hit you. So a Jedi could pretty easily parry 1000 shots if you consider that some would miss, the Jedi would move out of the way of some, and he would block the rest.

I don't like the idea of a set difficulty to parry, I'd rather have the shooter's roll to contend with. Consider this: a blaster attack may not be one pull of the trigger. A practiced shooter may fire one well-aimed shot or several shots at a target he is attacking. I use Jango Fett in AOTC's shooting the Jedi Master (forget his name) at the arena; Jango shot several times with the last shot getting through the Master's defense. Did Jango attack several times or were all the shots one attack? I think an attack can be a number of shots which would increase the difficulty of the Jedi to parry.

IMHO....
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Blasted rules. Why can't they just be perfect?

[Bren]

jmanski

[garhkal]

[ZzaphodD]

[jmanski]

[Bren]

garhkal wrote: