Critical Miss: Issue 4 (GM's and Jedi Knights)

GM's and Jedi Knights

"Just 'Cause Luke Did It, It Don't Mean Squat..."

Let's start with the basics.

Control Pain: "Ha! You're wounded!" [dice rolling] "Um, no. Control Pain..."

This power is a major "pain" in the butt. Sure, it's great as a player, but think of it for the GM as another one of those rewind/erase buttons. You carefully orchestrate the final showdown with the major baddie. He has set up an ambush, with the hopes of catching a character off guard and... Bam! You sucker punch him and the character is wounded. Now he will have to fight a desperate battle while off balance and wounded, while the villain...

"Wait... excuse me, I make my Control Pain roll, so I don't suffer the effects of my wounded status... sorry."

"But the showdown... the desperate battle... the ambush..."

"Yeah, well, hey, what can I say... so what were you saying about the villain?"

Detoxify Poison: "We need credits, send the Jedi to the cantina and have him get in a drinking contest again..."

The above statement is not a lie. My character was a bastion of goodness and light. A pillar of stability and lawfulness. A cornerstone of... sigh. They made him go to the cantina and get into drinking contests to make money. We had a Bounty Hunter who never, well, hunted, and a couple of aliens (Gamorrean and a Jawa) who would start bar brawls and not much else, so money was always a little tight. What to do? Go to the local cantina of course.

The rules state; a very easy difficulty roll is needed for mild poisons, such as alcohol. Very easy difficulty translates into a total of 3 - 5. If you have even one or two six sided dice and roll them, you are pretty much guaranteed a total of three or more. Only snake eyes will ruin your day... Now that I think on it, I suppose it was a little curious that no one got suspicious that the same guy came in week after week to the cantina in Mos Eisley and won all these drinking contests with aliens whose stamina and fortitude should have drank him under the table. (refer to aforementioned "we were fifteen" comment)

Remain Conscious: "Ha! You're unconscious!" [dice rolling] "Um, no. Remain conscious..."

Rewind/erase button. Pretty self explanatory. Now, rather than go into more detail about a power that speaks for itself, I am going to let you in on a massive rule rape that everyone may not know about. BLASTERS SET ON STUN KICK ASS! For those of you who have no qualms about the mass murder of dozens of Imperial troops in your games, disregard the following. For those of you who preserve life at every opportunity, especially Jedi, read on.

If your character is wounded from a blaster bolt, they suffer a minus one dice (-1D6) to all their rolls from there on. That's pretty meaty unless you have an experienced character who has upwards of four or five dice in most of his attributes or skills. Now, if you mention that your blaster is set on stun when you wound someone (determined by the ratio between his Strength roll and your damage roll), he doesn't lose any itty, bitty, die from his rolls - he gets his ass knocked out! Seriously, unconscious for something like 2D6 minutes.

That is really brutal when you think about it. A Jedi has one shot at rolling and avoiding this fate... the rest of you are screwed. You are then totally at the mercy of your GM. Think on that the next time you are Christmas shopping for your GM.

Telekinesis: Yes, this means that on a high enough roll you can "rip" blasters from the hands of your opponents, ala Vader in Empire

This is just an all around useful power. I don't think I need to mention all the practical applications for this, but here are a few dirty tricks me and my friends developed over the years. Some of you may have thought these up too.

Trigger the release on a blaster's power pack. (Pretty tricky, but a good roll can do it, say high Moderate to low Difficult.)

The classic but always funny belt buckle release. (Most people's pants won't instantly fall down, but it is good for comic relief in the middle of a game, and useful for removing gear laden belts.)

Triggering the button on blast doors/turbolifts. (Or the more violent Darth Maul method of hurling something into the access panel. Violent, but damn, it looks cool.)

Levitating your lightsaber through a door, or down a corridor, toward advancing troops. (Pretty intimidating, but be careful your GM doesn't get cocky and have someone try and shoot the handle... bye, bye lightsaber...)

Throwing stuff at people. This would appear to be cool at first, such as dropping a landspeeder on someone's head (damn Jar Jar Binks), but unfortunately that is too easy, and as such, leads to the Dark Side.

Lightsaber Combat: Now we start to get nasty...

This is perhaps one of the single most dangerous and overbalancing powers in the game. (With perhaps the exception of Telekinetic Kill, of course... augh... augh... windpipe closing...).

Without going into a long and drawn out explanation of the game mechanics behind it, it basically allows a Jedi to add his Force skills dice to his lightsaber skill for the purposes of both attacking and damage. More often than not, this usually doubles the dice available for an attacking Jedi... ouch. Think of it like this, if a Jedi character has 4D6 in his lightsaber skill, and 4D6 in his Sense skill, he gets to roll 8D6 to hit you. A lightsaber does a base damage of 5D6, and if that character has 4D6 in his Control skill, he gets to roll 9D6 for damage. There aren't any "normal" characters or NPC's who can survive such a brutal attack.

There are balancing factors of course, difficulty numbers to "activate" the power, and usually multiple opponents to force the Jedi to bring out the big guns. But a GM's best weapon of defence is good roleplaying. It should always be at the forefront of a Jedi's mind as to whether or not they are justified in their actions, and whether their opponents are really evil, or just hapless NPC's trying to do their job and caught up in something bigger than themselves.

Now there are a multitude of other powers at a Jedi's disposal, and I won't try and extrapolate on them all here. Suffice to say there are a dozens of powers available, not including Dark Side powers. I have a final word on Jedi in the game, and a few last pointers to potential players and GM's.

Windbag's final thought...