Jedi Mind Tricks (House Rules - Work In Progress)

Our war games are drifting into familiar territories for the primary school crowd: Star Wars.

Not that I'm against it.  Star Wars at least provides a rich background from which we can easily craft scenarios.  I'm also sure that there's plenty of existing source material to be found on the web as well.  If it can flavour the game, I say do it.

Alex especially has been hounding me to come up with some rules for Jedi.  You know Lightsabers (or Life Savers as he calls them), Luke and the Force.  It should be pretty easy to knock something up that fits the bill without becoming a Jedi Codex or worse.  As usual the goal here is to add flavour in a manner that doesn't detract from the existing game mechanics.  So here's my initial thoughts:

Jedi Unit

Assuming that we're talking standard 'human-ish' Jedi:

1. Trainee Jedi: d6 Skill, 2+ Armour and  d10 Resolution
2. 'Licensed'(?) Jedi: d8, 2+ and d10
3. Master Jedi: d10, 2+ and d12

Weapons and Weapon Traits

Lightsaber Close Combat, d10 and therefore considered Heavy as per TGTMG Rules pg 30.

Do I go with powered-up Strength, introduce some new Weapon Traits or what?  Well I suppose non-Jedi could use a Lightsaber, so it can't be a magical weapon... therefore the weapon's effectiveness need be attributed to Jedi training etc.

Unit Traits

Jedi's seem to shun Armour in all the movies I've seen, rather they flick their Lightsaber's around knocking blaster bolts every which way - sometimes back into the fray.  Checking out the interweb, such moves have even got names like Ataru, Shien and Djem - cool!  Also Jedi don't seem too big on using guns and often strike me as not running outright to duel, but taking their time.  So here we go:

Lightsaber defense allows the Jedi to deflect or even redirect or reflect incoming fire.  Upon firing at a Jedi, firstly roll To Hit.  If a Hit is scored then:

• If the Jedi has a Done marker, allow the Jedi to perform a Skill roll which passes on 2+.  If passed, the ranged fire has been deflected however a 1 means the shot wasn't deflected and resolve as per usual.
• If the Jedi doesn't have a Done marker(s), allow the Jedi to perform a Skill roll which passes on a 2+.  Further, if a 6+ is scored, the shot is reflected back at the shooter and resolved as a normal Hit.

The above feels a slight bit overpowered... but then again, Jedi are hero-types in the Movies and rarely does ranged fire seem to trouble them.

Lightsaber master attack allows the Jedi to engage with many enemies at once.  In the hands of a Jedi, the Lightsaber confers a ROF of 1+ the number of enemies in Close Combat e.g., a Jedi engaged against 2 Soldiers is able to make 3 (1+2) attacks.

I'm also considering whether to give some Fate related power.  Re-roll your own or maybe forcing your opponent to re-roll? Banking Actions?

Isn't there something about the light and dark side? Maybe light guys can re-roll their die, and the dark guys can force enemies to re-roll theirs?

We'll have play it out a few times and see what happens.