"Jedi are Player Characters, and other thoughts of power." Topic

Was just reading some Blog on the FFG Star Wars license, and the author was pondering using the Dark Hersey engine as the engine and the power of Jedi….

Jedi being over powered was the key point he was going on about.

I finished closed the window and had the thought all Jedi are Player Characters, meaning that Jedi should be just another flavor of PC no more no less. If you look at the movies the few player characters that aren't Jedi have no problem keeping up with them. The real problem is there are damn few Non Jedi PCs.

Bushwah, sir. There are almost no jedi at all in the main trilogy. Han, Chewie, Leia, Lando, the droids – none of them jedi. Obi-Wan was that annoying super-powered NPC ally everyone secretly loves to see die. Luke was a munchkin power-gamer's PC, but the GM did the right thing and increasingly arranged to split the group as he grew in power. Luke got to go off on his own and face crazy enemies that would have slaughtered everyone else, letting the GM build more reasonable encounters for the rest of the party.

Good use of minions in all those stormtrooper fights, too.

The prequels don't bear mentioning. Really nothing but a cruddy ripoff campaign run years afterward by the talentless younger brother of the original GM, and played by a mix of power gamers ("we can all be jedi? awesome!) and mood-spoilers ("can I play a fish-frog alien whosa talksa lika deese alla da time? it'll be funny!). The new GM had no idea how to run a game, constantly confusing spectacle with storytelling, and his players were painfully awful at actually roleplaying the few times they were forced into it by the plot – especially that horrid little "tragic romance" subplot with the Amidal NPC.

"If you look at the movies the few player characters that aren't Jedi have no problem keeping up with them."

If you play the games some Jedi achive almost godlike powers. Not much you can do against Darth Nihilous who can kill the entire population of a planet with a single thought.

I don't have a problem with this, no different to other high end magic users in conventional fantasy RPGs. Characters need to go through some sort of progression, not start at Level 20 of course. As CLR says, it is up the GM to manage uber powerful characters.

Chief Lackey Rich – well played, sir (and it's even funnier, because it's so true)!

Doug

Actually, the big problem is PCs are smarter than fictional characters. We played a campaign with Jedi PCs. Minor powers in the hands of PCs is a recipe for disaster.

I heard the same thing about the engine.
I may have to take a pass on it. I was not a fan of the Heresy engine. Too… Bland for my tastes.

Actually, the big problem is PCs are smarter than fictional characters. We played a campaign with Jedi PCs. Minor powers in the hands of PCs is a recipe for disaster.

You need a game system that actively punishes players for running their characters as "smarter than Hollywood" types. There was an old RPG called Extreme Vengeance designed to emulate the worst excesses of the action-movie genre that did exactly that. If your character played smart instead of macho or refused to blithely folow the plot railroad too often, he lost major popularity. You could easily extend the concept (and even the rules) to the Star Wars setting.

Jedi are the sword-using mage in a setting where everyone else has a gun. Listen to Yoda's exhortations in Empire, and watch even the fully trained and experienced Jedi duel in Phantom Menace. Defense is easy and quick to use, though taxing if the attacks are too frequent. On the other hand, attacks with anything other than the light saber are concentration hogs, take time, and are always taxing. Access to the Dark Side changes the balance a bit, but at a cost. It is still a balance.

Both RPGs to date have treated the Jedi as bottomless energy sources for their tricks, but the movies and serials make it apparent that even a peak Jedi Master has limits. Blasters have ammo limits, presumably. So do Jedi.

Mace Windu had no practical limits, other than Force Lightning and a long fall. Jedi are much nastier than Georgie's expensive special effects could achieve; it took Tartakovsky's Clone Wars cartoon to show them off properly.

Blasters have ammo limits, presumably.

There's no evidence of that, any more than you'd expect a cowboy to run out of bullets in a old movie unless the Script demands it. Horse opera, space opera, it's all the same thing.

Yet even Mace Windu needed time and concentration to recall his light saber to his side in the serial, and was limited to dancing with the horde of droid troopers via short-ranged TK until he retrieved it.

And while his concentration was amazing, he lost it just as fast as any other Force sensitive did when light saber met flesh. By the reactions of Mace, Luke, Anakin, Dooku, and others, being hit by a light saber is mind-shatteringly painful assuming the blow wasn't simply fatal.

Excellent analysis Rich!

BTW did we ever see Mace Windu land after the fall from the window? Since Jedi could levitate objects (& presumably living beings) without too much dificulty, why couldn't he avoid a fatal collision with the ground? After all the barely trained Luke could levitate an X-wing out of the swamp without too much trouble.

BTW did we ever see Mace Windu land after the fall from the window?

Not a bit of it, and as Hollywood teaches us, no body, no death. Say it with me:

"No one could survive such a fall!"

And while his concentration was amazing, he lost it just as fast as any other Force sensitive did when light saber met flesh. By the reactions of Mace, Luke, Anakin, Dooku, and others, being hit by a light saber is mind-shatteringly painful assuming the blow wasn't simply fatal.

Operative word being "flesh" there. Grevious was insanely silly and as ineffective a fighter as could be, but he lost arm after arm without blinking. If he'd been trained by someone competent (not Count Dooku, that is) he'd have had a good thing going there – losing a cyberlimb clearly doesn't cripple you like having a real one lopped off does. Even Vader wasn't all that bad off after Luke renamed him Lefty – his more-or-less surrender was probably due to reading ahead in the Script a bit rather than forgetting to turn his pain sensors off.

In the licensed games, Jedi are flat better than everyone else.

When a 'Force User' can go toe-to-toe with TWO equal-level armored blaster-types, there's a serious game-balance problem.

After all the barely trained Luke could levitate an X-wing out of the swamp without too much trouble.

Didja see the movie?

"I don't believe it!"

"That is why you fail."

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Warren B.
minisculpture.co.uk