Star Wars using Hero...?

[pbemguy]

There are a number of threads on the forum regarding using Hero rules to play Star Wars.

 

I have browsed them, using Google searches to find them.

 

I was wondering about how to handle the different power levels of the characters, like say a smuggler versus a jedi. My thoughts are to have the characters buy everything with points like in a Champions game, so that way you could have a 200-point bounty hunter with nifty armor and lots of skills, or use those points to buy jedi powers and a lightsaber etc.

 

Does this make sense to the posters here? I don't have the Star Hero rules in front of me, but IIRC you use money to buy weapons, gadgets, armor etc. but I think a Champions approach would be better in this situation?

 

Does anyone have experience with this idea I'm toying with?

 

I do like all the Hero stuff that has been made for Star Wars, but I plan to have a more natural approach where the players throw together what they think their jedi can do (using a multipower) and I just adjudicate whether it seems to be Star Wars-y rather than require some kind of conversion from d20.

 

Let me know what you think! Any thoughts are welcome.

 

PS: I plan to use 5th but I might use 6th--I think the discussion fits with either ruleset.

[Nolgroth]

I generally agree with the Champions point buy concept and have decided in all future Hero games that I run everything will be point buy. If somebody wants to have access to a wide variety of weapons and gear, they should probably shell out some points to create a "Resource Pool" that they pay for with points. As to edition, either works fine. I prefer 6E but only by a smidgen.

[tkdguy]

Point buy sounds like the way to go. Note that 5e has lightsaber (aka energy sword) builds in both Star Hero and the rulebook; the former can do more, but is a lot more expensive.

 

Also, don't forget to use the "mook rule" -- one hit = dead -- for stormtroopers.

[NuSoardGraphite]

A lot of people do Star Wars like Champions. Personally I prefer treating it as a Heroic level game. The difference between a skiled character and A Jedi are indeed the skills. A Jedi would spend a good portion of their points on Force powers. Non force users would have a lot more to spend on higher characteristics, Talents and skills. It is no different than running a mage vs a Fighter or theif in Fantasy Hero. Once you get the balance down, it works great.

[massey]

So in the original Star Wars, I'd say you have at a minimum 3, maximum 6 players.  You've got at least Han, Luke, and Leia.

 

Han spends his points on smuggler skills, being good with a blaster, being a good pilot, and having the Millennium Falcon.  Leia spends her points on a bunch of diplomatic stuff, contacts, wealth, rank, etc, as well as being pretty good with a blaster.  Luke spends his points on lots of piloting skill, decent combat ability, and then some low level force sensitivity.  All three of these characters are roughly equal, we'll say, but when we first meet Leia she's going through a story arc where she doesn't have most of her stuff available to her.  That's okay though, because Luke doesn't get to fly a ship until the very end, and Han has a decent amount of points tied up in the Falcon, which isn't that useful when it's been captured by the Empire.

 

Now, you've got up to 3 more players in the game.  Chewbacca is cool enough that somebody wants to play him, though he might actually be Han's Follower.  Chewie spent his points on really high physical stats, skill with his crossbow, and tech skills.  The next character who might be a PC/might be an NPC is Obi-Wan.  He's got mystical Force powers that nobody else has, but he doesn't appear to be that powerful physically.  Finally you've got the two droids.  3PO is pretty damn useless most (well, I guess, all) of the time.  But R2 can hack into computers, and repair stuff, and is basically a fully functional team member.  So maybe a player gets both of these characters  Neither of them is a very high point character, but hey, you get two of them.

 

By Empire, Luke has increased his Force abilities, and may have paid for his X-Wing.  Leia (who seems to have most of her points active in between movies) is now a General with the Rebel Alliance.  Han is going legit and has bought skills and contacts with people who aren't crime lords.  Chewie is still Chewie, and Obi-Wan is a ghost.  The droids split up, though they don't really have a lot to do during the movie.  Of course then we introduce Obi-Wan's player's new character, Lando Calrissien.  

 

It's only really in Jedi that we see Luke's abilities start to outstrip the others.  He's clearly the most powerful by that point.  Even still, in the forest fighting on Endor, Leia hangs with him, fighting stormtroopers on speeder bikes.  So I think the other characters have been buying up their stats as well.

[pbemguy]

So in the original Star Wars, I'd say you have at a minimum 3, maximum 6 players.  You've got at least Han, Luke, and Leia.

 

Han spends his points on smuggler skills, being good with a blaster, being a good pilot, and having the Millennium Falcon.  Leia spends her points on a bunch of diplomatic stuff, contacts, wealth, rank, etc, as well as being pretty good with a blaster.  Luke spends his points on lots of piloting skill, decent combat ability, and then some low level force sensitivity.  All three of these characters are roughly equal, we'll say, but when we first meet Leia she's going through a story arc where she doesn't have most of her stuff available to her.  That's okay though, because Luke doesn't get to fly a ship until the very end, and Han has a decent amount of points tied up in the Falcon, which isn't that useful when it's been captured by the Empire.

 

Now, you've got up to 3 more players in the game.  Chewbacca is cool enough that somebody wants to play him, though he might actually be Han's Follower.  Chewie spent his points on really high physical stats, skill with his crossbow, and tech skills.  The next character who might be a PC/might be an NPC is Obi-Wan.  He's got mystical Force powers that nobody else has, but he doesn't appear to be that powerful physically.  Finally you've got the two droids.  3PO is pretty damn useless most (well, I guess, all) of the time.  But R2 can hack into computers, and repair stuff, and is basically a fully functional team member.  So maybe a player gets both of these characters  Neither of them is a very high point character, but hey, you get two of them.

 

By Empire, Luke has increased his Force abilities, and may have paid for his X-Wing.  Leia (who seems to have most of her points active in between movies) is now a General with the Rebel Alliance.  Han is going legit and has bought skills and contacts with people who aren't crime lords.  Chewie is still Chewie, and Obi-Wan is a ghost.  The droids split up, though they don't really have a lot to do during the movie.  Of course then we introduce Obi-Wan's player's new character, Lando Calrissien.  

 

It's only really in Jedi that we see Luke's abilities start to outstrip the others.  He's clearly the most powerful by that point.  Even still, in the forest fighting on Endor, Leia hangs with him, fighting stormtroopers on speeder bikes.  So I think the other characters have been buying up their stats as well.

 

I had to quote the whole thing. Brilliant!

 

When I started thinking of the game and the idea of a jedi being able to also buy a lot of gear, I imagined Darth Vader as a PC. His player was like, "I want all the force skills. And armor. And I'm the best pilot. And I have bionic limbs."

[Tasha]

I had to quote the whole thing. Brilliant!

 

When I started thinking of the game and the idea of a jedi being able to also buy a lot of gear, I imagined Darth Vader as a PC. His player was like, "I want all the force skills. And armor. And I'm the best pilot. And I have bionic limbs."

nah. Anakin started out as a powerful PC in the Second Movie. By the end of the last film he had a "Radiation Accident"(See champions for reference), I want to go dark Side and have all of the kewl Sith Powers. I lose some force skills because I want those Cybernetic Limbs. Also, I have a physical Limitation that I can't live long without my armor. etc.  I swear I played with this guy in the last Star Wars (FFG) game we played. He wanted to kill all of the PC's and become a darkside person. Thankfully the GM wouldn't allow it.

[Nolgroth]

I swear I played with this guy in the last Star Wars (FFG) game we played.

 

Looking forward to running my own FFG Star Wars game soon-ish. I love the dice mechanic, even if it was a bit confusing at first.

 

Re: Hero Star Wars; One of the things I always try to avoid is creating stats for canon characters. While they provide a benchmark of sorts, movies and games are different media. What you might want to do is stat out a basic Padawan/Apprentice Jedi, a smuggler or pirate type, etc. until you get a feel for balance. I feel like the stories we see are "writ large" like we do with our folk heroes. They are legends and the telling of their tales may well be exaggerated. Building a few sample characters will allow you to tweak the points until you are happy with them and have something to benchmark your starting expectations.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I think Hero Star Wars would really emphasize the imbalance between Jedi and regular characters.  Because everything is quantified and specific, you can't handwave away having superheroes and space cowboys in the same story as easily.

[Nolgroth]

I think Hero Star Wars would really emphasize the imbalance between Jedi and regular characters.  Because everything is quantified and specific, you can't handwave away having superheroes and space cowboys in the same story as easily.

 

Depends on the Jedi really. In the prequel trilogy, they were really effective, Wuxia like characters but Jango Fett was able to hold his own against Obi-Wan Kenobi for a while. In the original trilogy, there were certainly enhanced abilities. Again, they were not terribly more effective than the people around them. Mind Trick, for example, would not be very effective against high Ego characters. Even the blaster deflection was not perfect, what with Luke getting his cybernetic hand shot during that whole sequence. I think it is possible to run Jedi next to other characters. It's just that Jedi tend to rely upon the Force as their singular focus while other characters would need technology to even the ground. Heck, some characters may purposefully not be the combat equal to a Jedi, relying instead on more social or technical skills. "Sure Ran Partha isn't very good at shooting his blaster, but he can build and deploy a large variety of probes that help him out," kind of thing.

 

The era of the game might also impact the relative value of the Jedi. During the Old Republic era, there were legendary Jedi like Revan, Bastilla, and Darth Bane. Those individuals could clearly far more than a single character should. In the latter days of the Old Republic, Jedi like Obi-Wan and Yoda were certainly very powerful individuals. They were not invulnerable though, as attested by the sheer effectiveness of Order 66 (like it or not). During the Imperial Age with Palpatine, trained Jedi were all but extinct. Even after Luke Skywalker rose up and threw down the empire (or did his part anyway), Jedi and Sith became mere legend. Trained Force users are rare and the one attempt to institute a new order of trained force users seemingly failed. Kylo Ren is but a shadow of his grandfather, in terms of power and training. It will be nice to see how this era progresses on through the next two movies. Anyway, if Finn could hold his own and a former trainee can recall just enough of the Force training to hold off and even defeat Kylo Ren, the state of trained Force users is very poor indeed.

 

Also, there is the possibility to have non-Jedi, non-Sith Force users out there. The expanded universe contains a couple of examples of this. The Kel Dor (face masks, big brain looking ear things) had a tradition of the Barad Do (I think that's the name) who were Force diviners. In the The Old Republic MMO, there is a race on the planet Voss that has a similar concept. That opens the door to characters that have abilities beyond the norm, yet still have a distinct feel from the Jedi.

 

Droid characters may be super effective as well. HK-47, from the Knights of the Old Republic series of video games, was a distinctive and scarily effective assassin droid. The Old Republic MMO has a companion droid for the soldier class that would make a fine character concept.

 

Jedi can overwhelm a game, I don't think that there is an intrinsic need for them to do so.

[Ninja-Bear]

To add to Nolgroth, if you build Jedi similar to WEG's in the Classic Era, Jedi are not overwhelming at all.

[Ninja-Bear]

Tasha we all know the prequels are a heresy!

[Christopher R Taylor]

I actually played a droid (a modified med droid) in the Star Wars game we played.  But Jedi weren't available, it was set right after A New Hope so there was only 2 in the universe that anyone knew of).  He was remarkably effective in combat, but was very weak outside it, because droids are appliances and have no rights or authority, have to take orders, etc.

[Tasha]

I think Hero Star Wars would really emphasize the imbalance between Jedi and regular characters.  Because everything is quantified and specific, you can't handwave away having superheroes and space cowboys in the same story as easily.

 

Last time I ran SW Hero, it was Superheroic Space Wizards and Big Darned Superheroic everyone else. It worked great. 

[Ninja-Bear]

I got to play a wookiee in the ffg begining game. What a blast! Jesi tou say? Wookiee with vibroaxe!

[bubba smith]

perhaps galactic champions is more apropriate

[Netzilla]

As others stated, a lot depends on what flavor of Jedi you have in your game.  However, even with prequel-level Jedi running about, as Nolgroth pointed out, Jango Fett was able to hold his own against Obi Wan.  If you're going with that level of Jedi, I favor allowing the non-Jedi to make liberal use of Talents, Dark Champions/Pulp Hero style super-skills, cybernetics and better than normal (Madalorian) gear to help make up the difference.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Supposedly Jango Fett was some kind of super-merc with power armor, but even with that, its not very rational a normal person could stand and fight a superhero with a sword that cuts through anything and has bonus perception and CV plus telekinesis.

[Tasha]

Supposedly Jango Fett was some kind of super-merc with power armor, but even with that, its not very rational a normal person could stand and fight a superhero with a sword that cuts through anything and has bonus perception and CV plus telekinesis.

 

A sword that cuts though NEARLY everything. Jedi are really just over the top martial artists with a glowing sword instead of a metal one. really if you think about it, A lightsaber is really just a high tech "Hanzo Sword" that can cut though everything (Even god)

 

Actually thinking about it, using Ninja Hero and giving it all a SciFi wash would work really well for Star Wars. It would also probably allow for other "schools" of martial arts like the Mandolorian way of war to be in it's way equal to Jedi teachings. Remember that in the Old Republic the Manolorians almost took over the galaxy. It took some Jedi Going dark side and using some nasty dark side artifacts to defeat them (background to Knights of the Old Republic I)

[Christopher R Taylor]

I should modify that; The most capable mercenary in the world with top of the line power armor can stand his own against a PC-level Jedi, and lose.  

[Tasha]

I should modify that; The most capable mercenary in the world with top of the line power armor can stand his own against a PC-level Jedi, and lose.  

 

Obi Wan Kenobi at his prime as jedi Master in the clone war is far above the level of most PC's IMHO. Also Jango held his own for quite awhile, I suspect he also gave his life so Boba could get away.

[Ninja-Bear]

I should modify that; The most capable mercenary in the world with top of the line power armor can stand his own against all PC-level Jedi, and lose.

Yet would you argue that is it wrong to have Seeker ot Crusader along side Obsidian or fight Powerhouse? For some reason when Jedi get mentioned, people seem to make them more powerful than Superman. PC level characters aren't that powerful in my experience.

 

Tasha btw if you look under bibliography for the original Ninja hero, Classic Star Wars trilogy is listed.

[massey]

I should modify that; The most capable mercenary in the world with top of the line power armor can stand his own against a PC-level Jedi, and lose.  

 

I liked the part when young Boba Fett lifted up the helmet and his dad's head fell out.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Well I'm basing Obi-Wan's power level as being the PC because he's a main character in the story; what the PCs are.  So, in that campaign, he's PC level I figure.

 

Seeker and Crusader have abilities that put them far beyond normal human beings, look at their stats!  They aren't regular folks.  Its more like having a gunslinger fight along side a Wizard with martial arts.

[Tasha]

Well I'm basing Obi-Wan's power level as being the PC because he's a main character in the story; what the PCs are.  So, in that campaign, he's PC level I figure.

 

Seeker and Crusader have abilities that put them far beyond normal human beings, look at their stats!  They aren't regular folks.  Its more like having a gunslinger fight along side a Wizard with martial arts.

 

Obi Wan is still a regular guy. He's has powerful psychic (magical) Abilities and a hanzo sword (lightsaber), but he's still a regular person. He can take on a million mooks (and Droid Troopers make Jar Jar look like Einstein) without a problem. Better and More experienced Jedi than him were gunned down by weak Jango Fett Copies.

 

I guess it comes down to the game you want to run. Obi Wan has a ton of exp esp with all of the missions and battles he has taken part of. I am not sure that he was ever at the beginning PC level even before he was granted Master status.