Poll: In a Star Wars RPG, How Many Players Would Want To Pick Lightsaber Forms?

I'm in the middle of designing a homebrew Star Wars RPG with what I hope is about the same or slightly less complexity than 3.5 or Pathfinder; and I'm wondering how in-detail I should allow you to customize a Jedi character's combat abilities. In Star Wars, there are seven lightsaber forms with drastically different focuses. Knights of the Old Republic 2 touched on this a little bit, giving your character a selection of a few of them based on your class; and they gave moderate bonuses or penalties to attack or defense based on the situation. The system I have currently is quite a bit more in-depth, with three levels of mastery for each form, and each form providing drastically different capabilities.

For instance, Form IV, which is supposed to be about maneuverability and strong offense in the lore, gives free move when you attack, bonuses to attack when striking from different directions, but no real defense bonuses. Form V gives solid offense and defense, but only when you hold your ground, and so on.

Edit: Examples would be Darth Vader, who uses the grounded, powerful Form V; and Yoda, who bounces around all over the place with Form IV. Obi-wan can block just about anything you throw at him with the defensive Form III, and Count Dooku is a graceful fencer with the dueling-oriented Form II.

Thing is, this adds quite a bit of complexity. How many players would want to deal with that, and how many would just want to swing a lightsaber without having to worry about whether Form I or Form III is better suited to the situation?

first, good luck, that's one big task.

second, you might want to thin down your workload. it's already a labor of love doing a homebrew, so having 3 masteries for each form forces you to design 21 "capstones". iirc, jedis rarely master more than 2 styles for the more combat oriented. best case, that means you'll have a lot of work that won't pay off until much later when all the forms are mastered. worst case, you've wasted a lot of effort for little reward.

you might want to look into the animal style feat chains (i've recently stumbled upon all the animal styles of the monk, perhaps that's your inspiration), each animal form becomes a lightsaber mastery, and all you need is to burn three feats to completely master it, each giving bonuses and handicaps.

i know that for a pure combat oriented game, i'd look into it, but i'd brake fast if it got too complex. i'd be of the "quick and dirty thing that works" and let the dice decide if that works or not. the more combat options you add, the more combat oriented the game you design will be. is that your goal?

have you looked into the other star wars rpg's available? there's "edge of the empire" that i've played, and although i played a wookie with a heavy blaster, i was the only one fully kitted out with combat skills. the rest of the team was more skill-focused, things like pilots, translators, thieves/spies... that game had a bit of combat, but was very intrigue and stealth heavy. someone correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't there a d20 star wars book doing its rounds already?

once again, good luck. i've done a homebrew before, but i just took two systems, mashed 'em together, and cut out about a 1/3 of both systems and reskinned the rest. that still took me 3 months of design and 2 years of playtesting. what you're doing will take even more time.

If you are going to reinvent the wheel, you will want to keep things as simple as possible, at least to start. Personally, I wouldn't bother with specific styles. Let your players come up with their own styles using feats, or, if you HAVE to have distinct styles, give each style a list of feats that a player HAS to take, as they qualify for them. They won't have mastered the style until they have all the feats required.

(Or you could just play the WEG D6 version, which is a lot less complex than 3.5 :smallbiggrin:)

I'd be the sort that'd at least give it a shot, if you want to go to the extreme effort of making seven meaningfully different combat styles with full-on separate capabilities.

Star wars in the vein of 3.5 or PF?

Have you seen Saga Edition?

Regardless, if you want to create such a richly complex system, plan for your players to want full exploitation from lightsaber forms that exist. Players that enjoy 3.5 want a game where if they see it, they can bend it to their will.

So just try to make as much material as you have the energy to make.

Thanks for the input, guys. Though maybe what I'm hearing from this is that I actually want to tone down the overall complexity to below 3.5 or PF levels...

When in doubt, obey the rule of 3s. Three is the number that enables you to have enough unique and valid options without drowning someone in decisions or cluttering design space.

Edit: You can then later expand in a similar manner pretty easily. Say at a later stage in character development they get another choice of 3 (or another of the previous set), for a total of 6 options of which each individual would have access to 2. One more like this at another later stage and you have 9 options with 3 available to the character. A class & level based system can make this pretty obvious (say one choice at around 3rd level, another at about 8th and the final around 15th for example)

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Originally Posted by Mutazoia

If you are going to reinvent the wheel, you will want to keep things as simple as possible, at least to start. Personally, I wouldn't bother with specific styles. Let your players come up with their own styles using feats, or, if you HAVE to have distinct styles, give each style a list of feats that a player HAS to take, as they qualify for them. They won't have mastered the style until they have all the feats required.

(Or you could just play the WEG D6 version, which is a lot less complex than 3.5 :smallbiggrin:)

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I’d do something similar to this, but without tying feats to a style as such. Instead, I’d create an array of lightsaber feats you could qualify for at various levels and then define the forms as feat-sets.

Like, a Jedi who takes all the defensive feats (A, B, and C) is adopting form III. One who takes instead takes A, B, and D (D being a lightsaber v. lightsaber specific feat) is a Form II duelist. Someone who takes E, F, and G - mobility and offensive feats - is a Yoda-style whirlwind, and so on.

This also allows the occasional PC to
come up with a unique combo and found their own form (see also: Mace Windu and his almost-Sith-aggressive form VII.)

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Originally Posted by Lapak

I’d do something similar to this, but without tying feats to a style as such. Instead, I’d create an array of lightsaber feats you could qualify for at various levels and then define the forms as feat-sets.

Like, a Jedi who takes all the defensive feats (A, B, and C) is adopting form III. One who takes instead takes A, B, and D (D being a lightsaber v. lightsaber specific feat) is a Form II duelist. Someone who takes E, F, and G - mobility and offensive feats - is a Yoda-style whirlwind, and so on.

This also allows the occasional PC to
come up with a unique combo and found their own form (see also: Mace Windu and his almost-Sith-aggressive form VII.)

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I'm quite liking this idea, I'll think about using it.

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Originally Posted by Lord Lemming

I'm in the middle of designing a homebrew Star Wars RPG with what I hope is about the same or slightly less complexity than 3.5 or Pathfinder; and I'm wondering how in-detail I should allow you to customize a Jedi character's combat abilities. In Star Wars, there are seven lightsaber forms with drastically different focuses. Knights of the Old Republic 2 touched on this a little bit, giving your character a selection of a few of them based on your class; and they gave moderate bonuses or penalties to attack or defense based on the situation. The system I have currently is quite a bit more in-depth, with three levels of mastery for each form, and each form providing drastically different capabilities.

For instance, Form IV, which is supposed to be about maneuverability and strong offense in the lore, gives free move when you attack, bonuses to attack when striking from different directions, but no real defense bonuses. Form V gives solid offense and defense, but only when you hold your ground, and so on.

Edit: Examples would be Darth Vader, who uses the grounded, powerful Form V; and Yoda, who bounces around all over the place with Form IV. Obi-wan can block just about anything you throw at him with the defensive Form III, and Count Dooku is a graceful fencer with the dueling-oriented Form II.

Thing is, this adds quite a bit of complexity. How many players would want to deal with that, and how many would just want to swing a lightsaber without having to worry about whether Form I or Form III is better suited to the situation?

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Seven styles... That's two more options than Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock¹. How often are you going to need to check how the two styles currently in use interact? Can you change from one style to another mid-combat (assuming you can learn more than one)? How easy is it to memorize the differences in the styles? Is it easy to tell which one is best to use for a given situation? It seems to me that this is probably a case of "less is more". Lots of added complexity for little added enjoyment.

1. ALWAYS pick "Paper". Beats Rock and Spock, which are likely to be the two most common choices of Trekkies and regular people.

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Originally Posted by Lord Torath

Seven styles... That's two more options than Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock¹. How often are you going to need to check how the two styles currently in use interact? Can you change from one style to another mid-combat (assuming you can learn more than one)? How easy is it to memorize the differences in the styles? Is it easy to tell which one is best to use for a given situation? It seems to me that this is probably a case of "less is more". Lots of added complexity for little added enjoyment.

1. ALWAYS pick "Paper". Beats Rock and Spock, which are likely to be the two most common choices of Trekkies and regular people.

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Well, as set up right now it's not a straight 'A beats B, which beats C, which beats A' match up. The different forms do different things. Do you want mobility? Defensiveness? Pure damage? Utility?

Changing from one style to another in the middle of combat takes one action, and you get three actions per turn. It's worthwhile sometimes, but not all the time.

There are three levels of mastery (apprentice, adept, master) for each form, and gaining a level of mastery requires one talent point. You get three talent points per level, and Darth Vader would be around level twenty, for a maximum of sixty talents.

The intent is to allow players to pick up, say, two or three forms without sacrificing much of their build, and ALL the forms if they want to make a considerable investment. Each form provides more benefit for the talent points you put into it than a normal talent, but you can only use one form at a time, and only when using a lightsaber.

Possible alternative: Create 7 general 'lightsaber talents'; where each form is just a way to classify the talents. For instance, have each form have three talents associated with it, and each talent is associated with three lightsaber forms. You can learn all seven talents, but can only have three active at any given time.

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Originally Posted by Lapak

I’d do something similar to this, but without tying feats to a style as such. Instead, I’d create an array of lightsaber feats you could qualify for at various levels and then define the forms as feat-sets.

Like, a Jedi who takes all the defensive feats (A, B, and C) is adopting form III. One who takes instead takes A, B, and D (D being a lightsaber v. lightsaber specific feat) is a Form II duelist. Someone who takes E, F, and G - mobility and offensive feats - is a Yoda-style whirlwind, and so on.

This also allows the occasional PC to
come up with a unique combo and found their own form (see also: Mace Windu and his almost-Sith-aggressive form VII.)

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That's definitely how I'd do it if I was basing my system off of d20.

EDiT: I'd also take a look at how Hackmaster handles it. They have a bit of the rock-paper-scissors effect that you described.