Quote Originally Posted by Lord Lemming View Post
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?
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.