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ADVANCED STAR WARS RULES

By Jay Young

Posted 4/18/2007

The following optional rules are meant to better explain the Star Wars universe in game terms. In each instance, certain assumptions have been made to derive answers to tough questions concerning current second edition rules.

§1 LENGTH OF A ROUND

The length of a combat round for all participants and all vehicles scale 3 and below on the ground shall be 2 seconds. The length of a combat round for all participants and all vehicles scale 4 and above in the air shall be 4 seconds. This means that people running from starfighters on the ground will get two actions for every one action that a starfighter gets. Note that being on the ground also encompasses being on the “ground” onboard a ship.

§2 BREAKDOWN OF A ROUND

Within every combat round, each character gets a turn. Thus, the combat round is comprised of the collection of turns of all the characters present, both player characters and non player characters. Each character’s turn is then broken down into two components: the active component and the inactive component. A player enters the active component of his character’s turn when the GM recognizes that player as having begun his turn. During the active component of a character’s turn, he may declare actions and make dice rolls necessary to complete those actions as is customary for any character acting during his turn. While that character is acting, all other characters are deemed to be in the inactive components of their turns. After completion of the actions a character took during the active component of his turn, it becomes the next character’s turn, and the previously acting character enters the inactive component of his turn. During the inactive component, the character may only make dice rolls that are necessary as a defense to, or an immediate reaction to those actions that have been taken or will be taken against him that round during other characters’ turns. No affirmative actions are allowed while a character is in the inactive component of his turn. An affirmative action is any action which is not a parry, or which does not first require making a successful Reflex skill check. Perception and Search checks are not affirmative actions if they are required by the GM. To summarize in game terms:

During the Active Component, a character may:

• Declare affirmative actions

• Make any skill rolls necessary to complete those actions

During the Inactive Component, a character may:

• Make Strength rolls for damage purposes

• Make Parry skill rolls

• Make Perception and Search skill rolls if required by the GM

• Make Reflex skill rolls

• Make any skill roll which is predicated on a Reflex skill roll (i.e. make a Throwing skill roll to throw back a grenade after making a successful Reflex skill roll, or making a Dexterity check and/or a Strength check to grab and hold on to the side of a speeder after making a successful Reflex skill roll.)

• Wait patiently for his turn

Note also that as a colloquial matter, when referring to a character’s “turn,” what is really meant is the active component of that character’s turn.

§3 FORCE POINTS

In the past, there has been some confusion as to whether force points apply to the whole round when one is just being used for strength purposes to resist damage (or to parry an attacker, for example), or whether a force point used under such circumstances applies only to the strength or parry role. Naturally, this is an important determination to make. In conjunction with the rules in §2 on the breakdown of a round, the rules handling force points will be as follows:

• If a character intends to use a force point during the active component of his turn, he MUST, MUST do so before any dice rolls have been made. If the character has rolled the dice for any reason during the active component of his turn, then he may NOT declare a force point during this time (although he may later declare one during the inactive component of his turn—see below).

• If used during the active component of his turn, then the benefits of the force point WILL carry over to the inactive component of his turn.

• A character may, however, declare a force point at any time during the inactive component of his turn. If a character declares he is using a force point during the inactive component of his turn, however, then the benefits of the force point WILL NOT carry over to the active component of his turn.

• Regardless of when the force point is declared during the round, at no time will the benefits of a force point EVER carry over to the next combat round. Note that this limitation applies only to force points that are used in the context of the combat round, and not to those force points that are used for other actions like hacking into a computer mainframe which conceivably take longer than the two seconds allotted for a combat round.

§4 CHARACTER POINTS

Only two character points may be used during any roleplaying session. If a character wishes to use more than two character points in a session, he may do so, but will incur a dark side point for each character point used beyond two. This reflects the long-standing house rule in use in the game, as well as the extremely rare scenario when a character has actually been allowed to exceed the two character point limit.

§5 REFLEX

Reflex will be a skill used to determine how quickly an individual reacts to a certain situational stimulus. Examples of these would include:

• Throwing back a grenade that has landed nearby

• Catching yourself as you slide off of a cliff, or out of a speeding vehicle

• Catching someone else as they slide off of a cliff, or out of a speeding vehicle

• Moving out of the way of a sudden crashing object

• Diving behind cover when a threat is detected

It is important to notice that in each case, the action performed is a reaction to something else. The difficulty number is determined by the GM, and is completely subjective, based on his judgment of how much time the character has to react. A character may also have to make other skill checks, like strength or jumping, in addition to reflex to complete the action (i.e. one roll to see if the person is quick enough to react to the situation, the other roll to see if they can physically do it). In certain instances, reflex could also be used to determine individual initiative at the beginning of a combat round.

§6 DODGE

The dodge system employed by second addition rules provides for many unrealistic situations, including not being able to shoot an adversary with a blaster who is five feet away from you simply because he has 9D dodge. It is absurd to think that a person can jump out of the way of a blaster bolt or slugthrower round moving faster than the speed of sound. In addition, the rules make it too difficult for anyone to hit anyone else, causing ground combat to be needlessly drawn out. Dodge is therefore abolished under Advanced Star Wars rules. In the place of dodge will be the following modifiers, which, added together, will be the total difficulty number to hit a target:

Range:
+5 point blank
+10 short range
+15 medium range
+20 long range

Cover:
+5 1/4 cover
+10 1/2 cover
+15 3/4 cover

Movement:
+5 slight movement
+10 fast movement
+15 very fast movement

Condition:
+5 rain or fog

Called Shots:
+20 any specified area

• Range is determined by the weapon being fired.

• Cover bonuses will apply only if the object being used for cover could conceivably stop, or severely hinder the effects of the weapon being fired (i.e. a tree could be used as cover for a blaster, but not for a shoulder-fired rocket launcher).

• If not behind cover, a target is considered to be always at least slightly moving, such as diving for cover, yielding a +5 movement bonus.

• If the shooter is firing from a fixed position behind cover, no movement bonus will apply to protect him.

• For a +10 movement bonus to apply, the target must be making a running skill check that round.

• For a +15 movement bonus to apply, the target must roll a 30 with his running skill that round.

• If a specific area is targeted, then the called shot modification will apply. Failure to hit the specified area means failure to hit the target as a whole. This rule will apply firmly regardless of how realistic or unrealistic it may seem in order to give balance to a game with called shots available.

• Because any specific area targeted under the called shot rule must be exposed to be fired upon, no cover bonus will apply to any being who is the target of a called shot. The cover bonus, regardless of how great will be replaced by the called shot modification.

§7 AUTOMATIC BLASTERS

The use of automatic weapons in Star Wars has been a great enigma both to its movie audience, and to its roleplayers. To shed light on this enigma, a stirring question must be asked: Why doesn't everyone in the Star Wars universe use automatic weapons? Automatic weapons are nearly always considered in real life to be superior to semi¬automatic weapons simply because of the volume of firepower they are capable of delivering. Their development is an inevitability in warring societies. Even the movies evidence this fact in Empire Strikes Back when snowtroopers set up a heavy repeating blaster to attack the Millennium Falcon. So if automatic blaster technology is viewed as superior in large anti-vehicle and large anti-personnel weapons, why is it not used in hand-held blasters as well? After all, in Star Wars, the technology exists to send a spacecraft into a parallel dimension and hurl it across the galaxy, but it doesn't exist to make a hand-held automatic weapon? That is ridiculous. So again, why doesn't everyone in the Star Wars universe use automatic weapons? The answer lies in both blaster technology, and economic theory.

The basic idea of a blaster is that it uses an explosive compressed gas, called Tibanna gas, drawn from a clip, which is sent to a chamber known as the excite chamber. The gas particles are then somehow diffused of their explosive properties, and then superheated in the excite chamber. This process is called "charging" the Tibanna gas. The gas is then focused through a device that acts as sort of a magnifying lens called the actuator and propelled out of the blaster in the form of a blaster bolt. The advantages of a blaster over a slugthrower are obvious. First, gas is virtually weightless, and can be very tightly compressed. Blaster clips are very lightweight and hold considerably more shots per clip than their bulky, heavy slugthrower counterparts. Second, blaster bolts, while subject to dissipation over very long ranges, are considered to be more damaging and more accurate over short and medium ranges, in other words, the distance over which most ground combat with takes place. Given these assumptions about blasters, it is easy to see why the use of missiles is very limited in Star Wars; a larger-sized blaster bolt can immobilize or destroy a target just as well as a missile, but much more cheaply. This makes the blaster a preferred technology over the slugthrower or just about anything else.

Consider the excite chamber again. A very minimal amount of time is required to diffuse and superheat the Tibanna gas. A fully charged amount of blaster gas in a pistol might require only a fraction of a second, leading to the current fire rate of blasters in the second edition of two. Assume that the technology currently exists (and it does) to propel over a thousand bolts per minute out of a blaster, a rate of fire which is comparable to many modern day automatic weapons (some of which can shoot even faster than that). That would be more than 33 shots per 2-second combat round. If it takes a half of a second to fully charge the gas, then those 33 bolts will be much, much weaker. To turn an automatic blaster into an effective weapon, the time it takes to charge the Tibanna gas in the excite chamber must somehow be reduced and reduced considerably. How can this be accomplished? In short, the answer is that it can't. Believe it or not, there is a limit to Star Wars technology. Perhaps someday a method will be discovered to reduce this time (undoubtedly a hot area of scientific research) but right now, a fully charged blaster bolt takes a fraction of a second to produce.

What about a partially charged blaster bolt? Now there is a solution. If several weaker shots are concentrated on a specific area, the damage may be increased. Granted, each blaster bolt may do notably less damage than its fully charged counterpart, but it is possible. Now suppose that each blaster clip is generally capable of holding 40 shots of fully charged blaster bolts, but an automatic blaster clip is enlarged to hold 60. Suppose further that an automatic blaster can shoot 40 shots per round (1200 shots per minute). By spending less time in the excite chamber, to make the damage equal that of a fully charged bolt, approximately 7 bolts must be fired at partial capacity in a single burst. To allow more damage than a semi-automatic blaster, 10 shots are typically fired in a burst. This means that an effective hand-held automatic blaster must roughly use at least seven times as much Tibanna gas as a semiautomatic blaster.

Blaster gas is not free. In a galaxy of a thousand thousand worlds where one government tries to assert its sole authority, cost-cutting is absolutely essential. Because an automatic blaster uses seven times as much gas, it costs seven times as much to use one. Economic theory tells us that at higher prices, demand falls. This is a basic fact. Because a semiautomatic blaster can be nearly as effective, at 1/7 the cost, that explains why the Empire and everyone else does not use automatic blasters, even though the technology exists to make one effective. That does not mean they do not exist. They are made, and used according to the preferences of private individuals and small special forces teams. There are also, of course, repeating blasters, which rely on the use of external generators and gas reservoirs to power the blaster, eliminating ammo as a concern. For hand-held automatic blasters, however, ammo is a real problem. Yet if one does not mind frequent reloading, automatic blasters may be the way to go.

So, let's incorporate all of this into game terms.

§7.1 AUTOMATIC BLASTERS

• The stated damage code on an automatic blaster is its damage when firing on automatic.

• Automatic blasters, while firing roughly 1200 shots per minute, will tend to shoot in short 10-shot bursts with each squeeze of the trigger to do their stated damage. But because it takes time to point and aim at an opponent, automatic blasters will have an effective fire rate of 3.

• Because even enlarged automatic blaster clips hold 60 bolts worth of Tibanna gas, ammunition will be fully exhausted after 6 bursts. This means that each clip holds 6 bursts, unless it is backpack or battery fed, such as a repeating blaster.

• After a clip is exhausted, it will take one round to reload.

• All automatic weapons are more difficult to control than semi-automatic weapons, therefore, when firing a weapon on fully automatic the blaster skill will be reduced by -1D.

• Because automatic blasters are created for a specific purpose, the actuator is configured to fire a lower-powered blaster bolt with a certain maximum damage capacity per blaster bolt. Therefore putting the blaster on single shot will reduce the fire rate to 2, lower the stated damage by 2D, and remove the 4D penalty for firing on automatic.

• If a character is simply holding down the trigger and aiming at a static target, requiring no skill roll, 4 damage rolls will be allowed.

§7.2 AUTOMATIC SLUGTHROWERS

• Pretty much the same basic rules apply to slugthrowers, except that most slugthrowers are not necessarily created solely to be fired as automatic weapons. When fired on automatic, they typically fire in 3 round bursts instead of 10 round bursts like a blaster. Given this, the rules are just slightly different.

• Unless the weapon is capable of firing solely on automatic, the stated damage code on an automatic slugthrower is its damage when firing on semi¬automatic.

• Putting the slugthrower on automatic will raise the stated damage by 1D and cause -1D to be subtracted from the wielder's blaster skill.

• The amount of ammunition contained in slugthrower magazines varies much more than that of blaster clips, and is generally far less. A slugthrower magazine in Star Wars will hold only 30 rounds. This means an automatic slugthrower will be capable of firing 10 bursts before reloading.

• After a magazine is exhausted, it takes one round to reload.

§7.3 THE ARC

A seven year-old boy could be turned into a deadly force by handing him an automatic weapon, simply because it requires no skill to pull the trigger and sweep across an area. To incorporate this, the following rules apply to all automatic blasters and slugthrowers:

• At any given time, the wielder of an automatic weapon may choose to "arc" across an area up to 180° in front of him, and no skill roll is required.

• For the arc rule to apply, the targets being fired upon must be within short or medium range of the weapon being used.

• The odds of a person in front of the shooter being hit (friend and foe alike) are 9 out of 10 at point blank range (being generous).

• The odds of a person being hit are doubles, adjacent doubles, or a 6 with either die at short range.

• The odds are only doubles or a 6 with either die at medium range.

• Because not every shot fired will hit a target, arcing will lower the stated damage of automatic blasters by 1D.

• Because of their difference in the stated damage code, the damage of slugthrowers is the same when arcing.

• Approximately 50 shots are used in an arc for automatic blasters. This means that 5 bursts of Tibanna gas are used for each arc. The arc may still be used, however, if only 4 bursts remain in the clip.

• Approximately 30 shots are used in an arc for automatic slugthrowers. This means that 10 bursts of ammunition are used for each arc. The arc may still be used, however, if only 8 bursts remain in the magazine.

§8 NEW BLASTER SKILLS

There is a fundamental difference between firing a rifle and firing a pistol. There is a fundamental similarity, however, between firing a blaster and firing a slugthrower. The rules ought to reflect this. The following skills, even though referred to as "blaster" skills, will encompass both slugthrowers and blasters, and replace the previous skills governing their use.

• Blaster Rifle

• Blaster Pistol

§9 MARTIAL ARTS

Simply put, the current martial arts rules for Star Wars are horrible. They are far too unbalancing for the game and they can't even really be used at all without the companion in which they were published. The new rule concerning martial arts will be as follows:

• Martial Arts will be an advanced skill under brawling, to be treated as all other advanced skills.

• After a successful brawling attack is made against an opponent, a second roll using just the die code in Martial Arts will made. The result of this roll will then determine how much damage will be added to the character's strength making the attack.

• The additions to strength for damage purposes and their corresponding difficulty numbers are listed below.

Difficulty -- Corresponding Addition to Strength

5 -- +1D
10 -- +2D
15 -- +3D
20 -- +4D
25 -- +5D
30 -- +6D

Note that this addition to strength is not interpreted as the character becoming physically stronger, but rather the effect of using improved martial technique. Naturally, by the time a person reaches 10D in Martial Arts, they will be a complete master. Brawling parry, however, shall remain unaffected and must be raised regularly.

§10 DAMAGE SUSTAINED TO THE HEAD

• All damage taken directly to the head by projectile attacks (i.e. slugthrowers, blasters, etc. NOT brawling) will be doubled against the individual sustaining the injury, unless they are wearing a protective helmet.

• This will NOT apply to explosions such as grenades and thermal detonators (unless they are detonated next to the head) as they damage the entire body, not just the head.

§11 MEDPACS

• It takes a minimum of 10 seconds, or 5 rounds to attempt to apply a medpac.

• Medpacs may only be applied once every two hours.

• Fastflesh medpacs may only be applied once per day. If applied more than once in a day, the character on which it was applied will die. If used in conjunction with another regular medpac within a 24 hour period, there is a 1 in 3 chance that the character’s damage level will be increased by one level (i.e. wounded to incapacitated, incapacitated to mortally wounded, mortally wounded to dead). These odds will increase to 1 in 2 if two regular medpacs are used.

§12 STARFIGHTER COMBAT

As an attempt to alleviate some of the boredom and monotony involved in starfighter (or other aerial) combat, the following rules will apply:

Step 1

After the initial confrontation, at the beginning of each combat round, each pilot of a combating starship must declare whether or not he intends to fire that round if he gets the shot, and subtract a die from both his piloting and starship gunnery if he intends to fire.

Step 2

Next, opposing piloting rolls will be made, adjusting for maneuverability. This roll will be used to determine both who gets to fire that round, and what the total difficulty number will be to hit. The pilot with the highest roll that round will be considered the one in a position suitable for firing, and ONLY he will be allowed to shoot. This accounts for not being able to shake a good pilot in a good spacecraft off of your tail.

Step 3

The winning pilot will be allowed to fire on the losing pilot, adding to his starship gunnery roll the difference between their two rolls. For instance, if the loser rolls a total of 25, and the winner rolls a total of 35, the winner will get to shoot at the loser with a +10 bonus to his starship gunnery skill. The loser, however, can do nothing but pray.

Being Outnumbered

In the event that more than one starship is ganging up on another single starship, the outnumbered combatant will subtract from his piloting roll ID per additional adversary. Thus, the pilot of a stock light freighter with three starfighters on his tail must subtract 2D from his piloting roll at the beginning of the round. Rolls by all starship pilots will be made. It may be the case that the outnumbered craft will beat some and lose against others. If this happens, he may shoot at the ones he beats, using the appropriate winning modification, but not at the ones he did not beat.

Turret Weapons

If a craft has weapons on board which are fired by separate gunners in a 360° fire arc, the gunners will be able to fire at any adversary at any time, but will not be affected by any winning bonuses applying to the pilot's starship gunnery roll. In addition, if a turret weapon can be placed under the control of the pilot, it MUST be locked in a forward-firing arc. It is difficult enough to pilot a craft in combat. Attempting to look through a camera at the same time to fire at a moving target behind the ship would be all but impossible.

Overwhelming Fire

If the firepower concentrated on a given area by a capital ship is great enough, the skill of even the best of pilots can be rendered irrelevant. At any time, if a starship, enemy or friend, has the combined firepower of more than 50 weapons (roughly the combined fire arcs of two separate large capital ships) on its location, the odds of it being hit at medium range will be doubles. The odds of it being hit at short range will be doubles or a six with either die. Since fewer capital scale weapons will be able to target the ship at extremely close range, the odds of it being hit at extreme close range will be doubles. This imitates the arc rule applying to automatic blaster weapons.

§13 STARFIGHTER DAMAGE

Combat shields installed in a vessel allow it two very important advantages over non-combat shields:

• The shield generator is linked to the other energy-producing components onboard the craft. This would be primarily the engines, and the weapons generator. Linking the shield generator in this way will allow the shield generator to borrow the power from other ship systems to recharge itself.

• The shielding field protecting the rear and front of the craft can be doubled-up on one end by removing the shielding field from the other end. In other words, by leaving one angle unprotected, you may double the protection on the other angle.

With these two concepts in mind, let's explore how exactly the systems onboard a small spacecraft operate. Three primary parts of a vessel are responsible for the majority of the energy usage aboard that ship: the engines, the shields, and the weapons. Each is designed to operate independently of the other systems so that a failure in one will not result in a failure in another. When the shields are raised on a starship, that field is powered by the shield generator. After suffering an attack, it is sometimes the case that the shields will suffer such a massive shock causing them to be "blown". One may think of the shield generator as having a surge protector that automatically shuts it down to prevent further damage to the shield generator itself (an expensive part of a ship). The shields must then spend a certain amount of time recharging themselves. How much time, exactly, depends on the vessel and the generator, but because of manufacturing competition, they will be pretty much the same.

Let's assume that it will take the shield generator approximately two minutes to recharge the shields. Two minutes, however, can often decide the outcome of a battle. When it is necessary to have defensive shielding power, and have it now, combat shields become essential. Instead of waiting the two minutes it would normally take to recharge, power may be routed from one of the other two power sources onboard the spaceship. This will allow the shields to be powered back to full using "borrowed" power. If the shields suffer yet another massive overload, then the power surge will flow back to the supporting back-up system, causing it to lose power as well, until it can be recharged. In the event the shield generator itself is destroyed, shield capability will be completely lost.

At this point, it is necessary to include a note on the engines. A fast craft will always have an advantage over a slow craft. Always. The rules sort of bring this to mind using maneuverability. The rules do not, however, make a direct connection between the speed of a vessel and its maneuverability. Technically, under current rules, a ship with a space of 1 could still have 4D maneuverability. That will no longer be the case. Starting with a space of zero having +1 worth of maneuverability, each additional increment of space will allow a vessel to be capable of having +1 more of maneuverability, or one pip. Thus, a ship with a space of 6 can have, at most, 2D+1 of maneuverability, a ship with a space of 8 can have, at most, 3D of maneuverability, and so on. Therefore, when power is drained from the engines, and is subsequently lost from yet another impact to the shields, maneuverability will also be lost. The same deduction principle will apply to weapons and their damage code. In game terms, all of this will be interpreted as follows:

• In the event shields become "blown", shields will take a minimum of 2 minutes to recharge on their own.

• A successful Starship Shields role will allow power to be routed from a designated system to the shields.

• The pilot has the option of which power source he intends to draw from.

• If drawn from the engines, the space of the engines will be reduced by 3 to add 1D worth of shields.

• This implies that maneuverability will correspondingly be reduced by 1D for each separate power transfer.

• If drawn from the weapons, the damage code for each weapon aboard the craft will be reduced by 3D to add 1D of shields. This does NOT apply to concussion missiles, proton torpedoes, or other weapons not reliant on the weapon generator.

• The shield code may NOT be increased above its stated level.

• If the shields are again knocked out, the engines and/or weapons will continue to operate at their reduced power for 2 minutes before recharging.

• If the shield generator is destroyed shields cannot be raised again.

§14 STARSHIP SHIELDS

Naturally, this gives rise to how difficult it will be to route power to the shields. The more shocks the shield generator takes to its system, the more difficult it will be to keep continually routing power to the shields, to a maximum of 3 times. The following table will address this.

Instance in Which Power is Routed -- Difficulty

1st -- 15
2nd -- 20
3rd -- 25

• Making a Starship Shields roll requires an action during the round and is subject to die penalties if performing other actions during the round.