Pleh
2018-06-12, 10:43 AM
Star Wars Saga Edition (though probably adaptable to most systems with similar construction).
In a recent game, I plopped my heroes into a Lucrehulk hanger as a battlestation that is more or less *to scale* with the wikipedia entries.
That means that the "arms" of the lucrehulk are long enough to hold 25 C9979 Landing Craft each and those ships when measured to scale represent 140 squares each in Character Scale (because they're parked sideways and not longways). To simplify the math, I parked the heroes 5 spaces in, so they only were about 20 Hangers removed from the control sphere.
20x140 is still 2800 SQUARES of character scale movement. A very long march to be plinking away at B1 battle droids.
I gave them a few options, like hijacking the Tram that runs on the inner side of the hangar arm, jumping out into space to walk around security, and even just hunkering down in the ship they arrived in to wait out the waves of battle droids until their Jedi escort returns.
The option they've elected is to break out the A2 Swoop Bikes that were in storage on their ship and fly up to the bridge.
I was running the numbers on the bike's 16 square movement speed on this 2800 length set of conjoined hangers and the awful truth is that it was still taking 88 rounds of double movement to cross the distance. So now we're talking about an entire encounter of All Out Movement to keep the session reasonable in length. These hangars are not empty. Not every landing pad is empty, but even the empty landing pads still have huge cargo containers and they're filled with battle droids taking pot shots.
But even All Out Movement is 44 rounds of Pilot checks with no chance to avoid collisions (or maybe even Max Velocity for 4 or 5 rounds). This is starting to sound more like a reasonable session, since combat is going to have to be hacked and reprogrammed to suit the scenario. It isn't going to be a static battlefield with enemies adjusting position carefully.
This is Podracing.
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The reason I'm posting in Homebrew is because I know of no rules in Saga that handle this Run and Gun scenario, where in every round, the enemies will be a different set of creatures, almost like they just reset their stats and positions every round. To prevent this from becoming a reason to abandon returning fire against the droids, I've come up with an alternate combat system (for a scenario that comes up commonly in Star Wars movies and games).
I thought about posting in the Roleplaying/Other area, but it seemed like "this is homebrew." So it's here. If it needs moving, no hard feelings here.
The Rules:
The Speeder bikes have normal fly speed of 16 squares in character scale. When moving at 1 move per round, they operate normally as described in the core rules.
If they move at 2 moves/round, the amount of avoiding obstacles and attacks becomes more intensive, so they take -1 to attacks and pilot checks.
If they move at 3 moves/round (all out movement), they take -2 to attacks and pilot checks. They also gain +1 to Reflex Defense (faster targets being harder to hit).
If they move at 4 moves/round (maximum all out movement), they take -5 to attacks and pilot checks and they have a collision if they fail the DC by more than 10. The bonus to Reflex Defense increases to +2
If they move at Maximum Velocity, they take -10 to attacks and pilot checks and they have a chance when experiencing a collision to outright crash their vehicle. Bonus to Reflex Defense increases to +5.
In each round, they may choose to attack enemy droids before making their pilot check. If they choose to make an attack, they have to use a weapon they can wield in 1 hand and they take -2 to their pilot check. If they hit, they aren't subject to suppression fire (see below). If they hit with an Autofire attack, they may protect an adjacent (adjacent relative to the flying group) ally from suppression fire as well.
If you decide not to attack or fail to hit, you might be subject to suppression fire. The droids will all be Aiding Another to give one or two of their members a substantial chance to hit the heroes (there will typically be 8 to 12 droids firing at the heroes in any given round). The PCs targeted by Suppression Fire take -5 to pilot if they take damage from Suppression Fire, but no penalty if the suppression fire misses.
---
The game becomes simple risk vs reward. You prepare for a long chain of Skill Challenges that are totally dependent on how high you want the stakes to be.
In a recent game, I plopped my heroes into a Lucrehulk hanger as a battlestation that is more or less *to scale* with the wikipedia entries.
That means that the "arms" of the lucrehulk are long enough to hold 25 C9979 Landing Craft each and those ships when measured to scale represent 140 squares each in Character Scale (because they're parked sideways and not longways). To simplify the math, I parked the heroes 5 spaces in, so they only were about 20 Hangers removed from the control sphere.
20x140 is still 2800 SQUARES of character scale movement. A very long march to be plinking away at B1 battle droids.
I gave them a few options, like hijacking the Tram that runs on the inner side of the hangar arm, jumping out into space to walk around security, and even just hunkering down in the ship they arrived in to wait out the waves of battle droids until their Jedi escort returns.
The option they've elected is to break out the A2 Swoop Bikes that were in storage on their ship and fly up to the bridge.
I was running the numbers on the bike's 16 square movement speed on this 2800 length set of conjoined hangers and the awful truth is that it was still taking 88 rounds of double movement to cross the distance. So now we're talking about an entire encounter of All Out Movement to keep the session reasonable in length. These hangars are not empty. Not every landing pad is empty, but even the empty landing pads still have huge cargo containers and they're filled with battle droids taking pot shots.
But even All Out Movement is 44 rounds of Pilot checks with no chance to avoid collisions (or maybe even Max Velocity for 4 or 5 rounds). This is starting to sound more like a reasonable session, since combat is going to have to be hacked and reprogrammed to suit the scenario. It isn't going to be a static battlefield with enemies adjusting position carefully.
This is Podracing.
---
The reason I'm posting in Homebrew is because I know of no rules in Saga that handle this Run and Gun scenario, where in every round, the enemies will be a different set of creatures, almost like they just reset their stats and positions every round. To prevent this from becoming a reason to abandon returning fire against the droids, I've come up with an alternate combat system (for a scenario that comes up commonly in Star Wars movies and games).
I thought about posting in the Roleplaying/Other area, but it seemed like "this is homebrew." So it's here. If it needs moving, no hard feelings here.
The Rules:
The Speeder bikes have normal fly speed of 16 squares in character scale. When moving at 1 move per round, they operate normally as described in the core rules.
If they move at 2 moves/round, the amount of avoiding obstacles and attacks becomes more intensive, so they take -1 to attacks and pilot checks.
If they move at 3 moves/round (all out movement), they take -2 to attacks and pilot checks. They also gain +1 to Reflex Defense (faster targets being harder to hit).
If they move at 4 moves/round (maximum all out movement), they take -5 to attacks and pilot checks and they have a collision if they fail the DC by more than 10. The bonus to Reflex Defense increases to +2
If they move at Maximum Velocity, they take -10 to attacks and pilot checks and they have a chance when experiencing a collision to outright crash their vehicle. Bonus to Reflex Defense increases to +5.
In each round, they may choose to attack enemy droids before making their pilot check. If they choose to make an attack, they have to use a weapon they can wield in 1 hand and they take -2 to their pilot check. If they hit, they aren't subject to suppression fire (see below). If they hit with an Autofire attack, they may protect an adjacent (adjacent relative to the flying group) ally from suppression fire as well.
If you decide not to attack or fail to hit, you might be subject to suppression fire. The droids will all be Aiding Another to give one or two of their members a substantial chance to hit the heroes (there will typically be 8 to 12 droids firing at the heroes in any given round). The PCs targeted by Suppression Fire take -5 to pilot if they take damage from Suppression Fire, but no penalty if the suppression fire misses.
---
The game becomes simple risk vs reward. You prepare for a long chain of Skill Challenges that are totally dependent on how high you want the stakes to be.