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Alright, GamerNation. Those of you who listen to the podcast are familiar with our "d20 Docking Bay" segment - where we delve into a single rule or issue that may be providing problems to some folks.

As I pontificate about next week's episode, I'm pulling a few general ideas from sparse areas around the forums - but it occurs to me that I'm simply interpreting. Which isn't what we want.

d20 Docking Bay was originally designed to handle questions of RAW or stuff that might require tweaking - dealing with a single, specific rule or case. So?

What do you guys have questions about?

I'm starting this unified thread to have ideas posted by you, our audience, as to what you like to see talked about for the d20 docking bay. Is there a rule you don't understand? A house-rule you want to fix a problem? A situation that the rules didn't cover? Get your questions and concerns posted up here - and we'll get 'em covered!


Peace, Love, and Good Gaming!

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Peace, Love, and Good Gaming!

Those wacky points and how to get them. I love the idea of them and parts of what they do. But how do you incorporate them well into the game? For Instance say you do complete some great mission, like i have Resuce and we just saved the jedi knight, well the point is i just got these extra boost in power for 24 hours, but i just went through and did the big climax action when you would want to use them. Now i have seen where you can hold the boost for the next part. But most of the time that is the begining of the next climatic ride, not where i would want that ability used. I kind feel like it is a waste. So i want discussion on the subject, and some looks at how the rules can made better to work with the campaign.

-Mirror Armor, Jedi are not the only ones who can redirect now-

Dasis

I'm guessing you're talking about Destiny Points. I also would like to hear some discussion about this. Maybe some tips for incorporating them into the game. In the "pre-production" of my group's campaign we ended up deciding to exclude the content entirely (which resulted in a little innocent RAW tweaking). This was just because in our first efforts to teach ourselves the game we found it just a little too abstract. I seem to remember also deciding to oust the Destiny Point for the sake of preserving the player's right to develop their characters freely as they desired. Looking back after a few months of play, we are starting to get a better idea of what the Destiny Point is designed for but a little further explanation would be helpful - if only to have a better idea for a future campaign.

Yea it is Destiny Points, i put it in my subject but not in my post. barly see my subject. I am also talking about when you achieve your Destiny.

I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on Destiny Points as well.

From my own experiences with them on both sides of the screen, they can be very powerful. Being able to instantly negate a critical hit that scored massive damage, or to auto-crit in spite of how horrid your attack bonus is (brutal if mixed with Burst Fire and Power Attack) are pretty major things.

Not to mention the whole Destiny bonus/penalty/completion bit. I know there are quite a few GMs that don't use the system at all, or use the Points but not the rest of the system, perhaps being justly concerned about how quickly all those ability score bonuses can add up.

Another possible topic for your show might be roles at the table for various characters. Not so much a class discussion, but more along the lines of player interaction and how to (maybe) avoid stepping on too many other toes at the same table. It's one thing to make a Wookiee Soldier with a vibro-ax and massive strength with the intent of being a bruiser, but what if there's already a character (or two depending on group size) that has being a melee bruiser as their primary schtick. Typically this happens when a new player joins an existing group, and suddenly you've got two characters fighting for the same niche, which in my experiences often leads to hurt feelings and either one player leaving in disgust or the group breaking up.

A third possiblity might be determining what era to set your campaign in. I know some players are more enthused about some eras than others, for a wide array of reasons.

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"If you've never seen an elephant ski, then you've never been on acid."
- Eddie Izzard

Contributing Author of the GSA
Dono's Gaming & Etc Blog
Follow me on Twitter at @donovan421

In my current campaign i have been using them as a way to , at the appropriate moment unlock a PC's destiny if they so wish and also as a way to escape one attack that kills them a kind of "your destined to not die here" kinda thing.
The players seem to like it and it doesn't seem overly broken or anything.
However the unlocking destiny part can only really be used if a destiny applies to that character plot wise and alot of campaigns won't have this sort of thing.

Dan

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4000 ABY:The order......
In a galaxy not as long ago ,now slightly further away....

Character name:Dan
Age:18
Class:Gamer
STR:11
Dex:13
Con:11
Int:15
Wis:11
Cha:10
Lazyness:∞

Maybe another possible topic is the idea of house rules, and just how far is too far?

Being somewhat infamous over on the Holonet Forums for assorted Rule Changes files for the OCR and RCR versions of Star Wars, I apply plenty of tweaks and patches to what I view as issues with the system for the campaigns I run (tend to stick to RAW when running con games just to make sure me and the players are all on the same page).

But I know there are plenty of GMs that go much further in tweaking how things work, such as the mention in Ep6 about some GMs allowing droid PCs to use their Strength score to qualify for Shake it Off, or various other things.

It certainly is something that should be discussed with the entire group before hand, but there also comes a point when it seems to the players that they're not playing the game they signed up for, and instead are playing the GM's homebrewed rule system.

Sorta like sitting down to play D&D3e and find out that the DM has made so many changes that you're practially playing GURPs.

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"If you've never seen an elephant ski, then you've never been on acid."
- Eddie Izzard

Contributing Author of the GSA
Dono's Gaming & Etc Blog
Follow me on Twitter at @donovan421

The condition track.

This is something that is completely new to my group and we have yet to actually use it. I know there are many things within the game that affect an individuals condition track either up or down, but were not real sure on when and how to use it. To be honest we haven’t really spent much time on figuring it out, didn’t really seem essential to our current game, just another rule to get in the way. I figured it may be a good topic to discuss, maybe give some good examples of how it’s used.

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My current Star Wars Saga Campaign
Saga Edition play log- http://starwars.smoochbiz.net/

OK, gdotbat. If we get to this particular topic - it might be a while - and if you're playing SWSE right now and don't understand the Condition Track, we need to remedy this immediately...lol...

I'll try and explain it simply - and others, please feel free to add your own interpretation. So, here it goes... [ahem]

The Condition Track is what makes damage taken "real". Okay, now... what do I mean by that? Let's pause for a moment to think about other games. Let's look at the (currently) most popular RPG in existence: D&D 3.5. In D&D, a character has hit points. They've always measured your "life" - for lack of a better term. But what has bugged a lot of players is that no matter how much damage you take, it doesn't affect you in any way whatsoever until you're at 0 hp. This is utterly silly. And this is what the Condition Track remedies.

Now, it's explicitly stated in SWSE that hit points aren't "life" - they're a "cinematic" representation of near-misses, grazing wounds, etc. The fact is, realistically, if you take a lightsaber to the chest - YOU DIE. No matter what level you are. Being 20th level doesn't mean you can take multiple blaster hits to the face, but a 1st level character can only take one. That's silly. HP, thusly, represents your ability to "barely get hit" - kind of like an amount of destiny that protects your character, and slowly gets "chipped away" over time until they have no more, and the next successful attack takes them down (0 hp).

But some hits are "more real" than others - they represent something that nearly killed you, for example. Or something that took a lot out of you. This is where your Damage Threshold comes in. Your Damage Threshold is a number equal to your Fortitude Defense plus any racial or feat modifiers. If you take damage in a single attack equal or greater than your Damage Threshold - you move 1 step down the condition track. This means you took a "bad hit", and have suffered for it. Cinematically, maybe you're bleeding, got knocked upside the head, or are winded.

As you move down the condition track, things just get worse - as you take more bad hits, your condition becomes awful. At the top of the Track, you're normal. 1 step down, and you're at a -1 to all defenses, -1 to attacks, and to all checks. Another step down, and you're at a -2. Then a -5. Then a -10, plus you drop to half movement. One more step, and you're unconscious.

So... how do you move back up the Condition Track? You can take 3 consecutive swift actions (across multiple rounds, if needed) to use the Recover action, which moves you one step up the condition track. The recover action is basically pausing for a full round (3 swift actions) to "catch your breath" or "get it together." Picture a wounded character staggering to a wall, pausing to shake his head then clear his vision and get back into the fight.

DOZENS of feats, talents, and special abilties are devoted to helping you move up the condition track faster - or pushing an opponent down it much quicker! (I'm not going to go into them all - it's really part of the meat of the new edition). An enemy could have 10,000 hit points - but 5 hits above his damage threshold will bring him down!

The condition track is what gives "realism" to hit points and what gives use to half the feats and talents in the core rulebook. Use it. Know it.

Hope that helps, bro!


Peace, Love, and Good Gaming!

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Peace, Love, and Good Gaming!

Burst fire with turrets? It's a little obscure but can be a big problem when these monstrous guns find their way to the battle mat. The question is: do laser canons have an autofire setting? My group ran into this problem during our last session and, try as we might, we could not find an entry for "laser canons", which is what their starship is equipped with, anywhere in the book that mentioned its rate of fire. If this information is MIA in the CRB (is that crunk or is that crunk?) then I really hope they covered it in Starships of the Galaxy.

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"Mine! Or I will help you not."

Back to Destiny though, I'd just like to add that in my campaign, we use Destiny as Plot-Point Points, if you think about that for a second. They become a do-amazing-things point. So let's say that a poor little Jedi Padawan is surrounded by Dark Siders in a cave, where the only exit is blocked off by boulders (this actually happened), and the rest of the party is dead or incapacitated. The player uses a DP (hehe) to automatically bring down those boulders with Move Object. Automatically meaning that these points now allow for the players to do the occasional out-of-mechanics action that would normally make totally no sense. I just thought I'd throw that out there.

I've got a few questions about mind affecting talents. Mainly, how is it that the Noble's inspiration talents are not mind affecting effects? Their very names (Inspire Confidence, Ignite Fervor, etc.) describe different emotions that the noble manipulates with her talents. I'll also bring up the Officer's tactical talents. These are identified as mind affecting affects but I find that the benefit they bestow upon allies are more derived from an interpretation of orders than manipulation of emotions. It's a really thin line but I was wondering if anyone else saw the difference. Like I said, mainly I would like to hear the Noble's inspiration talents discussed.

I'll bring up two more prestige classes. The Force Disciple and the Jedi Master. Both receive similar abilities at first level. The Disciple is granted immunity to Mind Affecting Effects while the Master is granted immunity to Fear Effects. But are there any negative mind affecting effects that aren't fear effects? If not, then why is the Disciple granted this ability that appears to be the only ability in the book that voids the beneficial abilities of other party members?

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"Mine! Or I will help you not."

As to your question, LI, I think it's a good one. I spent some time scouring the books and forums - and my opinion? It's a mechanical choice to differentiate between the mystical and the mundane.

If a noble's talents were mind affecting - droid party members wouldn't benefit. Simply, I think it was a (wise) design choice that - while not necessarily realistic - allows for "non-force" boosts. And there is a mechanical need to differentiate force from non-force buffs and debuffs - and I think "mind affecting" is mechanic they chose for that.

My 2 credits.


Peace, Love, and Good Gaming!

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Peace, Love, and Good Gaming!

Well, it's not quite what I was expecting but it makes sense... it makes sense, by not making sense. But hey, it's WotC. Speaking of which, how about an honorary D20 roll for Gary Gygax.

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"Mine! Or I will help you not."

Not seeing to much here anymore, folks... [sounds of crickets chirping]

Nothing else you want discussed/elaborated on in the d20 Docking Bay? Let us know.


Peace, Love, and Good Gaming!

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Peace, Love, and Good Gaming!