Inverse Optional Damage Rule

[Ral_Brelt]

I'll start by saying I skimmed the thread before posting so I may have missed it but here goes...

As I recall, blasters and lasers are both available in the universe but I don't recall what makes them different in the RAW. By what we've seen in the movies, blasters seem to have a detonation on impact. Throwing stories down when they hit, bursting trees on Endor, etc. I bring this up. I wanted to bring this up because of the conversation that occurred in here. I'm thinking that with the larger scale weapons, the kill zone (max damage dice) should perhaps have an area of effect? I also seem to recall somewhere in the EU they describe turbolaser impacts as glassing large areas per shot. It may have been d20 that listed it. Oh...the introductory adventure set describes a large crater as evidence of an ISD bombardment on a village.

[CRMcNeill]

That's all central to the discussion going on here. The issue being addressed is that, according to the RAW, a character may completely avoid any form of damage from extremely powerful weaponry (up to and including the Death Star) if said weaponry fails its To Hit roll by even a point. In real life, the larger and more powerful a weapon becomes, the likelihood of damage from said weapon being in some secondary or tertiary form (as opposed to direct impact) increases exponentially. As such, a House Rule of some form is needed to address the inequity between the RAW and actual physics.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[CRMcNeill]

A point worthy of note: under current blast radius rules, characters are permitted to Dodge grenades. However, the RAW states that grenades with timed detonators detonate at the end of the round in which they were thrown. This means that characters have time to see the grenade and react to it. A contact detonated grenade, on the other hand, would go off the moment it hit something. In that case, shouldn't the Dodge Difficulty be higher for an impact detonated grenade than for a timed grenade? From an initiative standpoint, it could be argued that timed grenades always go last, and therefore anyone capable of making a Dodge roll can do so. Conversely, a blast-radius effect weapon that detonates on contact (be it a launched grenade, a mortar, a turbolaser blast or a proton torpedo) will be much less likely to give its targets sufficient warning to take cover.

As such, when trying to work out a viable rule for the topic at hand, would the targeted characters even have a chance to dodge? And if they did, wouldn't it be at greater difficulty?
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[DougRed4]

Good point, crmc. I think in the case of impact-type damage, unless the character is aware of the incoming attack, they shouldn't have any chance of dodging.

I've contemplated allowing characters a chance to "save" their actions in this game (as some other games allow). In other words,

Player A wins the initiative.

He chooses to "save" his action, allowing the other side to attack.

Player B then goes, and takes his action.

Player C follows, making an attack.

Now it's time for the adversaries to go.

When the bad guy goes to shoot at Player A, he is waiting, and could choose to interrupt his opponent, attacking him, or perhaps dodging or parrying the attack.

I'm concerned about slowing down the pace and quickness of the game, so haven't really done this whole-sale, only allowing "saving an action" a couple of times in the past.

Doing such a thing would better fit, IMVV, giving characters a chance to avoid such an attack. In other words, if a character is aware of an incoming attack (perhaps he hears the incoming whine of a deadly mortar), he could then "interrupt" the action and use his "saved" action to dodge.

OTOH, since characters are allowed to take additional actions, with the only cost being a MAP, perhaps the better way to handle this would be to allow a player who is aware to dodge, taking the standard -5 to their action, as long as they're aware of the incoming attack.
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green