Lightaber Combat Variant -Roll and Keep

[Liquidsabre]

Yes, r&k is what I'd like to see implemented in star wars d6 in some way. It keeps rolls from getting insanely high but still distinguishes skilled users versus unskilled.

What Id like to see is control added to melee attack or damage by player choice but only the base skill or dmg is kept for LSC. Sense would be added to damage or attack roll for deflect/redirect (it's own power).

Now what I did to create parity with non force users is create advanced combat skills that function in the same way as LSC and deflect/redirect for Jedi. As well as allow combat tricks to be performed with just the advanced combat skill.

We also went to the single MAP and single roll per power to speed up and simplify things!

To keep the high strength species in line I went with a similar r&k bonus to strength rolls so a wookie will have the same max base strength of 4D as other characters but may roll 6k4 for all strength rolls as a species trait and 6k6 only during wookie rage.

It's a versatile mechanic that I find helps bring balance to wonkier bits in play.

Great thread, love hearing everyone's ideas!
_________________
Belsarius: "All clear!"
Sarge: "Alright, now....wait a sec kid. Do you mean 'all clear' or is this a slavers-on-Daysum III 'all clear'?"

[garhkal]

[Liquidsabre]

[garhkal]

Is there any change to that if say with some, control is modified by relationship while alter is just prox? Or what of those which have both, but only on one of the power rolls?
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Liquidsabre]

Not sure if I follow, but say a force power has Alter: Moderate difficulty and Control: Easy difficulty (however these are determined). We'll say their control skill is their lowest, so that is rolled against a Moderte difficulty. I think of this as the control skill capping the alter skill dice the force user is able to harness for the multi-force skill power.
_________________
Belsarius: "All clear!"
Sarge: "Alright, now....wait a sec kid. Do you mean 'all clear' or is this a slavers-on-Daysum III 'all clear'?"

[garhkal]

Look at many of the C/S, C/S/A and S/A powers out there.. One of the power rolls is modified by proximity, the other(s) are modded by relationship.

EG. Battle meld, a Control Sense power.
The Control is base 10 difficulty + 2 per person, Plus relationship
The Sense roll is base 10 plus proximity.

I was asking how That would be handled by your rule.
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Bren]

[Liquidsabre]

Bren nailed it. Regardless of the origin of the highest difficulty, once calculated, it will be rolled against by the lowest force skill used by the power.
_________________
Belsarius: "All clear!"
Sarge: "Alright, now....wait a sec kid. Do you mean 'all clear' or is this a slavers-on-Daysum III 'all clear'?"

[garhkal]

Ah.. so the worst combined of the 2 against the lowest of the skills.. gotcha./
_________________
Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Tupteq]

Reviving thread

I'm thinking about trying this rule in my games. I'd use following ones:
* 1ND = not-kept die.
* 5K3 = roll 5D and keep 3D (actually 2D + Wild Die)
* All dice exceeding character's nominal skill are not kept.
* All penalties (MAPs, wounds etc.) reduce excess dice first and then kept dice.
* Wild Die is rolled normally and has to be kept.
* This applies to all stuff that may raise number of rolled dice, like: Fire Control, lightsaber (control and sense bonuses), Menauverability, combined actions, preparing (SW 2nd R&E, p.81), equipment bonus (workshop, handy weapon etc.).
* 3ND may be exchanged for 1D.
* For each full +5 that exceeds attack roll, +1ND is added to damage.

Example: Jedi with control 7D rolls lightsaber damage, he decides to exchange 3ND for 1D, so he rolls: 5D+1D+4ND = 10K6.

Example: An X-Wing pilot performs 3 actions in the round (-2D MAP), his piloting skill is at 5D and X-Wing Man. is 3D, so he rolls: 5D+1ND = 6K5.

And now time for questions.
What to do with not-kept pips? For example character is having control 3D+2. What to do with this +2?

Adding not-kept pips to total makes (statistically) +2 more powerful that +1ND (up to about 5D) and +2 is even better with larger number of ND (2ND+2 etc.).

Ignoring pips may look OK for control and lightsaber damage, but what about starship with Maneuverability 1D+2?

This dilemma stops me from playtesting this rule.

[Tupteq]

Nobody answered, but I'm going to continue anyways

Yesterday I explained the rules to players and they liked them. They especially liked the possibility of exchanging 3ND for 1D. Only one player (starfighter pilot) complained a bit, because of less useful Maneuverability (which now provides not-kept dice), but we playtested rules (during space battle) and it went very well.

Mechanics isn't too slow, the only requirement is to have the appropriate number of dice (e.g. rolling 10K8 using just 5 dice doesn't work, you need to see all dice to remove excessive ones).

I'm still not sure if I keep this mechanics, but first impressions from it's use are rather good.

[Leon The Lion]

So, what did you end up doing about the non-kept pips?

I don't like the thought of simply removing them. Having ship maneuverability, fire control, etc. expressed only in full dice would lower the resolution of the differentiation between models too much to my liking.

The only idea I had was thus:
Change all non-kept +1 pips into +2, and all +2 pips into +3 (that's right, a hard +3, not +1D).
Now, treat the pips as a die result that may be chosen as one of the kept dice.

I didn't put that much thought into it. May be still too good, but at least not as good as always adding the pips in.
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But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize... Only be sure to call it, please, "research".
- Tom Lehrer

[Tupteq]

[Tupteq]

I made some calculations of constant values used to replace +1 and +2 and:
* 2 is very weak, it's usefulness is marginal (max +1% to chance of beating difficulty).
* 3 is more sensible, it gives results in the middle.
* 4 is powerful, sometimes giving results better then additional die, but for higher difficulties (above average roll value) it's not as good as an additional die.

So, it looks like there's not much sense of using value 2 (marginal chance of use), on the other hand value 4 often provides better results than +1ND, but I don't think it's a real problem, in normal mechanics +2 also may be sometimes better than +1D.

Finally I decided to use pips+2 as a replacement value (effectively: +1 -> 3, +2 -> 4). I'll see today how it works.

[Tupteq]

My (last?) update about roll&keep mechanics.

Last thing I didn't know how to handle was a +1/+2 bonus in non-kept dice. I finally decided to just add pips to result normally, so there's no mapping of any kind. Mathematically +2 is better than +1ND, but it's compensated by possibility of reducing penalties (1ND "absorb" 1D of MAP, +2 can't do this) and by option of replacing 2ND for one more kept die. And, most important - it's much much simpler.

After few months of playtesting i may only say that this mechanics works perfectly. It makes more important investment in skills, roll results are more stable and it allowed me to create lightsaber forms without mappings like "+1 for each D".
Changes required in stats are marginal, I think biggest change was in sensor rules (detection/identification difficulties had to be remapped because sensor bonuses are not kept).
Rolling speed is almost identical to original rules, overhead of looking for dice to remove is compensated by fewer dice to sum. Players quickly learned how to do it quickly and they are having more fun using R&K mechanics.

My initial goal was to provide small and big bonus to lightsaber forms, but after first promising tests I decided to extend this mechanics to all skills and I think this was a good idea.

I only hope some of you give it a chance and at least try it.