Lightsaber Duels

THE PROBLEM (AS I SEE IT)

As much as I love the simplicity, speed and cinematic flavor of the D6 system, there are some areas in which it just doesn't quite represent what we see in the movies. The most glaring of these (to me) is in lightsaber duels. In the movies, we see duels that go on for quite a while—several minutes at least. In game terms, this equates to dozens of rounds. Yet I quickly discovered in my game that duels were usually very quick and very deadly affairs—with the first person to land a hit usually winning. 

The mechanics of the system I was using (based on modified first-edition rules) were as follows:

Attacker gets Lightsaber skill + Sense skill to hit; 

Defender gets Lightsaber skill + Sense skill to parry

Whoever rolls higher, hits

Damage of a successful hit is 5D (the Lightsaber's base damage) + The Control skill of the attacker

Thus, if an attacker has a 5D Control skill, they would do 10D of damage on a successful hit. Compared to the average PC strength of 3D, this 10D Damage is devastating—in 1st Edition, this would usually result in the incapacitation of the person being hit. In 2nd Edition, this would usually mean the person hit would be killed.

So here you can see my quandry. One hit in a lightsaber duel = death or incapacitation. And all you need to do to his is roll 1 point higher than your opponent to hit. Thus, lightsaber duels are deadly and quick. This would be great if it were a game about Samurai, who were all about the 'one hit, one kill' thing. But this is Star Wars, where we saw all kinds of titanic duels going on (Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan vs. Maul; Yoda vs. Dooku; Anakin vs. Obi-Wan; Obi-Wan vs. Vader; Luke vs. Vader; etc.) None of these fights were over in just one round of combat.

FIRST SOLUTION:

For this reason, I have been tinkering with the system to figure out some way to mechanically 'allow' what we see on screen to happen in the game. The change I made was to lightsaber damage. Damage remains at 5D + Control Skill of attacker—but the defender is allowed to SUBTRACT his Control skill from the Attackers. Thus, if you have a person with a 5D Control skill hitting a person with a 4D Control skill, the attacker would only do 5D + 1D, rather than 5D+5D damage. If you have relatively evenly matched opponents, this works nicely to prevent the damage from climbing to instantly lethal levels. But it didn't satisfy me entirely.

SECOND SOLUTION:

In the movie duels we see the fighters battling back and forth—one seeming to gain advantage, only for the other to regain it later. We see them throwing in kicks and punches and telekinetic pushes. If you go 'by the book' with these kind of things, odds are your Jedi is going to get his hand lopped off if he tries to punch his opponent. In fact, its almost a sure thing. What I came up with is this (and it is still a work in progress):

STEP 1: Gaining the Advantage

If two Force users square off, they enter into 'duel mode' (cue 'Duel of the Fates' music). Opponents roll initiative as usual and the winner may attack. The first person to attack does so normally—but the defender gains a +10 bonus to their defense roll. The attacker rolls against the defender and consults the following chart:

If attacker's roll is 11 or more less than the defender's roll + 10

— Attack Blocked

— Does not gain the "Advantage" (explained later)

If attacker's roll is between 10 and 6 less than the defender's roll + 10

— Attack Blocked, however

— Attacker gains the "Advantage Bonus+5"

If attacker's roll is between 5 and 1 less than the defender's roll + 10

— Attack Blocked, however

— Attacker gains the "Advantage Bonus+5"

— Attacker can make an attack of opportunity (explained later)

If attacker's roll is equal to or greater than the defender's roll + 10

— Attack hits, roll damage as normal

— Attacker gains the "Advantage Bonus+10"

After the initial attack, one of several things will happen.

1) The first attacker will gain the advantage, in which case, proceed to step 2.

2) The first attacker will fail to gain the advantage, in which case the second duelist will get to make his attack and see if he gains the advantage. If he does, proceed to step 2.

3) Neither duelist will gain the advantage. In which case, start over from step one.

STEP 2: Dueling with the Advantage

In a duel, the duelist with the Advantage automatically win the initiative vs. their opponent. 

The advantaged duelist also gets an initial Advantage bonus of +5 or +10 to hit their opponent.

Both duelists are still at a +10 bonus to their defenses, however.

The advantaged duelist would consult the following combat charts:

If attacker's roll + Advantage Bonus is 11 or more less than the defender's roll + 10

— Attack Blocked

— Subtract 5 from Attackers Advantage bonus (loses ground)

If attacker's roll + Advantage Bonus is between 10 and 6 less than the defender's roll + 10

— Attack Blocked (maintains status quo)

If attacker's roll + Advantage Bonus is between 5 and 1 less than the defender's roll + 10

— Attack Blocked, however

— Attacker gains an additional Advantage Bonus +5 (presses advantage)

— Attacker can make an attack of opportunity (explained later)

If attacker's roll + Advantage Bonus is equal to or greater than the defender's roll + 10

— Attack hits, roll damage as normal

— Attacker gains an additional Advantage Bonus +10

When the Disadvantaged duelist gets his chance to attack, he consults the following chart:

If disadvantaged duelist's roll is 11 or more less than the advantaged duelist's roll + 10

— Attack Blocked

— Add 5 to Opponent's Advantage bonus (loses ground)

If disadvantaged duelist's roll is between 10 and 6 less than the advantaged duelist's roll + 10

— Attack Blocked (maintains status quo)

If disadvantaged duelist's roll is between 5 and 1 less than the defender's roll + 10

— Attack Blocked, however

— Subtract 5 from Opponent's Advantage bonus (reverse)

— Attacker can make an attack of opportunity (explained later)

If disadvantaged duelist's roll is equal to or greater than the defender's roll + 10

— Attack hits, roll damage as normal

— Subtract 10 from Opponent's Advantage bonus 

STEP 3: Shifting Advantage

As you can see from the above, the Advantage bonus will fluctuate during the duel. It may increase or decrease due to attacks/actions by either the Advantaged or Disadvantaged Duelist.

If the Advantage bonus ever reaches zero (0), then the duel begins again at Step 1.

If the Advantage bonus ever reaches negative numbers, then the Advantage actually switches from one duelist to the other, with that negative number becoming the Advantage bonus of the formerly disadvantaged. For example: Darth Vader has a +5 Advantage vs. Luke. Luke makes an attack and manages to hit (exceeds Darth's roll+10). Not only would he do damage to the dark lord, he would also reduce his advantage to -5. This would turn into a +5 Advantage for Luke and Darth would now be Disadvantaged.

ATTACK OF OPPORTUNITY:

It is possible throughout the duel that a duelist will get the chance to make an "attack of opportunity" (AOO). This represents a little extra 'oomph' outside the normal lightsaber combat. This could take the form of a punch, or a kick, or a telekinetic attack—pretty much anything other than another lightsaber or weapon strike. NOTE: A character is not REQUIRED to make this attack—it is just an option. 

If a character opts to take this extra attack, they may do so, but they must subtract dice as normal for wounds/stuns or taking multiple actions. Thus, if they had already declared 2 actions in a round (an attack and a parry), the attack of opportunity would be made at -1D. NOTE: Taking an AOO does NOT penalize any other rolls during a combat round. It is essentially a 'free' action, so it does not take up any other actions the character may have declared at the beginning of the round.

While normally, the defender could use his lightsaber to parry pretty much any hand-to-hand attack, not so with this attack of opportunity. The defender must use other combat skills to avoid the attack (whatever it may be)—thus, they could use brawl parry or dodge or their own telekinesis to resist hostile force pushes, etc.

CONCLUSION:

And so...that's it. I still haven't fully tested it in actual game (I used earlier/modified versions of this), but it seems promising. It adds a layer of complexity, yes, but...for the moment at least I can't think of a better way.

Oh, and for multiple duelists (say a 2 on one situation) it could be handled in a couple ways.  First of all, the two partners could just use combined actions against their opponent. Or two duels could be going on simultaneously between the duelists, with different advantage/disadvantage stuff for each (i.e. you could be at an advantage versus one opponent, but at a disadvantage against the other). 

ADDENDUM: 

One more house rule I came up with related to Lightsabers was that Force users could add or SUBTRACT their Control Skill from Lightsaber damage. The theory behind this is that they may only wish to do a limited amount of damage to disable someone without killing them outright (for good Force users) or they may want to toy with their opponents for a while (generally for bad guys).