October 26 recap

It was Benton's birthday!  There was cake.  And way too much food.

The adventure began with comm calls.  Rek got a call from the Bounty Hunter's Guild, saying they accepted his application and wanted to interview him.  Dhiel got a call from Ganar, the Khil crime lord in the Taris Exchange, saying they would trade information about his Mandalorian father in exchange for Kazbich.  Dhiel made arrangements to bring him by Javyar's Cantina in the Lower City.  Dhiel convinced Kazbich to come with him under vague pretenses.  Logger followed behind, suspicious, and Rek sent a probe droid to quietly follow as well.

Kazbich found himself face to face with Ganar and Calo Nord, and Dhiel took his information and left.  He saw Canderous Ordo come in, and then moved to intervene.  Kazbich quickly let off two grenades and escaped in the shuffle, as did Dhiel, Logger, and the probe droid in quick succession.

Meanwhile, Rek was visited by Tegas Sulkec, an armored Caamasi who served as the House Tresario liaison for the Bounty Hunter's Guild on Taris, who interviewed him and gave him all the necessary paperwork.  Rek researched Gobmush's bounty, not learning a whole lot, so Gobmush asked GE-3-RX-34 to look into it.  Rek also found a bounty on Taris: the Togruta pirate Dyani Zaan, who had been raiding ships leaving Taris and hiding out on the Rogue Moon.

Kazbich was quite angry at Dhiel for selling him out and demanded a duel.  Firearms were the chosen weapon, and the location was right by the Raraza.  Gobmush with a stun baton and Rek with an ion gun moved quickly to knock the two out and convince them to not kill each other for a while.  Rek botched some surgery to patch up Dhiel's wounds from his encounter with Calo Nord, but he was soon healed by Logger.  GE-3-RX-34 told Gobmush that the bounty on his head came from Globmulch, an ally of his who was now a mid-level Exchange enforcer.  Dhiel accessed the holocube given to him by Ganar and learned that his Mandalorian father was a Whiphid named Jur'Nakk, who lived with the Mandalorian exiles in the Outer Rim on [planet to be determined].

Moving through the asteroid field toward the Rogue Moon, the Raraza was attacked by recycled Krath chaos fighters, one of whom attempted unsuccessfully to ram the ship.  The ship landed outside of a large cave which was acting as a hangar for the rest of the ships, as well as the Praetorian frigate which served as the command ship.  (Though it never came up in the game, the frigate's name was the Zaan Timotee.  If you've read the Star Wars novels, you may get the reference.)  Kazbich hooked up a lot of explosives to the ships so they'd be able to destroy the entire fleet if need be.

Moving through an airlock, the party moved through the cavern base.  Facing a group of Togruta pirates, they tripped an alarm.  Some of the group found a hidden passage that led back to the vacuum of space, so they didn't dare go through.  Eventually, the group faced off against a group of Togruta pirates rushing to meet them, facing off against a group of swordsmen before launching into a room with pirates taking cover behind tables.  After clearing out that room, they moved to a very dimly lit observatory, where they faced off against Dyani Zaan.  Gobmush charged her, handily decapitating her after a long fight.

On the way back, Logger got a message from his master On-Warr, only to reveal Aya Lim, the Kaminoan he fought on Nar Shaddaa; the Sith have captured On-Warr, and they demand Logger surrender himself to them at [location on Taris to be determined].

The Errata Fairy

A whole bunch of new errata and clarifications have been posted on the Star Wars RPG Web site, available here.  Some of these will actually affect individual party members.

Highlights: 

• The scoundrel talent Fool's Luck no longer stacks with Skill Focus.  (This was actually a house rule of mine, now made official.)
  
• Certain Force powers that targeted damage threshold now target Fortitude Defense with a size bonus: Force Grip, Force Slam, and Force Stun.
  
• Force Point Recovery can only be taken once now, not multiple times.
  
• Concealment and cover can protect against telekinetic Force attacks now.
  
• Wealth and Hyperdriven are clarified that their level is determined by all the classes and prestige classes that grant access to that talent, not just noble and scoundrel, respectively.  So a Corporate Agent or Crime Lord will count their levels towards the Wealth payout, among others.
  
• The feat Acrobatic Strike grants only a +2 bonus now, not +5; also, it no longer stacks with Powerful Charge.
  
• Force Grip is now 6 squares and line of sight, not just line of sight.
  
• The Move Light Object application of the Use the Force skill, when used as an attack, is treated like a ranged attack; thus, it can be Deflected.
  
• You can't Vital Transfer yourself, and you can choose to heal less than the amount granted to prevent dealing more damage to yourself than you want.  (You can still Dark Healing yourself, however.)
  
• To use any ability that affects characters with a Dark Side Score of 1 or higher, such as Dark Side Sense or Dark Side Scourge, you have to know they've got a Dark Side Point — i.e., you have to witness them committing an evil act, or they're obviously a Bad Guy (like a Dark Jedi, a crime lord, bounty hunter, stormtrooper, etc.).  In essence, you can't activate them "by accident" (and also explains why the Jedi were never able to sense evil Palpatine).  Further, when using the Sense Force application of Use the Force, you can specify that you are only searching for characters with a Dark Side Score of 1 or more.
  
• Force Thrust is slightly nerfed, as the target adds both their Strength bonus and base attack bonus to resist it.  (Repulse from TFU already had this written in.)
  
• You have to roll a natural 20 on a Use the Force check to activate a power to regain all your spent Force powers, not just roll a natural 20 on Use the Force.
  
• The soldier talent Stunning Strike keys off of your damage roll, not your attack roll anymore.  (Which is actually how I originally read the talent accidentally.)
  
• A critical hit with an autofire weapon will hit every target in the area, but will not deal double damage.
• When a Force power is Rebuked and reflected back, the effect is based on the original Use the Force check.  If the Rebuked power is itself Rebuked, the effect is based on the Use the Force check for the first Rebuke.
• Involuntary movement (like Bantha Rush or a telekinetic Force power) never provokes an attack of opportunity.
• Droids do not count their starting hardware against their carrying capacity.

The Old Republic

The new Star Wars MMORPG, "The Old Republic," was announced today.  Check out the Web site.

Details are a bit vague, but it's set 300 years after the KotOR games, in an era where the Sith have returned, triggering a terrible war that's ravaged the galaxy.  The Sith have forced the Republic into signing a treaty, and the two now have a quickly unraveling peace.  Players can serve the Republic or the Sith, though very little is known about the game (playable races, classes, etc.).  According to their releases, they're very focused on having a strong story element in the game.

In other news:

• Episodes of the Clone Wars cartoon series are available streaming on the official Star Wars Web site, and for the most part, I've been pleasantly surprised.
  
• There may not be a game in November; I'm not certain yet.  Pretty much all of my co-workers and I saved our vacation days for the last three months of the year, and I'm skeptical about getting any Sundays off.
  
• I had some more content written for the blog here — mostly the origin of On-Warr Bistellion, Logger's Jedi Master — but I'm holding off on it for now.
  

You can't escape your destiny

Here's where we stand with each character's destiny:

Rek Luk — The destruction of Riga the Hutt and his criminal empire.  Currently on the wayside.

Logger — Rescue the Ewoks that were taken from his homeworld by slavers.

Kazbich — Secret for now, but involving Marina.

Dhiel Fek — Secret until Dhiel finds his father, but involving the Mandalorian clans.

Gobmush — Haven't decided yet.

October 12 recap

In the planet contest, Jim won third prize (a spiffy new ability to penalize darksiders), Jake won second prize (five starship maneuvers), and Andy won 4,000 XP, hitting 5th level.

Our adventure began with Dhiel getting his ass handed to him by Dh'rang, a particularly large Togorian gladiator who knocked him out in three rounds in the dueling ring.  Gobmush had better luck, taking down Kern Teem, a Gran gunner.  Melee wins over a ranged offense, it seems.  Logger continued training with On-Warr, receiving a vision of himself with a new lightsaber and being told that he was now a Jedi Knight, before On-Warr departed to see after Aya Lim, his wayward apprentice who was now in Republic custody.  Kazbich was making calls to the Exchange, and Rek Luk got himself a swoop racing sponsorship with the Biscuit Baron, becoming this season's Taris Swoop Champion over the Black Vulkars, the Hidden Beks, Czerka, and Industrial Automaton.

After collecting their winnings from Rek's victory, Gobmush and Dhiel were ambushed by a Rodian bounty hunter wielding a carbonite rifle.  Gobmush and Dhiel luckily dispatched him quickly and dragged him back to the ship, calling Rek back to help interrogate him.  Together, they learned that the Rodian's name was Rex (a contact from Logger's backstory, though he wasn't there) and that someone had put a bounty on Gobmush's head.  Rex is a member of the Bounty Hunter's Guild, saying the bounty was placed legally through there, and Rek gets the idea to join the Guild in order to gain access to their store of information.

Kazbich pursued information about the Exchange, learning that Calo Nord, a bounty hunter, and Canderous Ordo, a Mandalorian, were the two most prominent musclemen for boss Davik Kang, as well as some new help who'd come in, including a Khil money man named Ganar.  Kazbich met with Ganar at a front holorecording studio, saying to let his boss know he was back in town before realizing that Davik Kang might actually be after him for his planned betrayal.  Logger, meanwhile, turned to Kazbich to help him track down Sair Arcturus, the slaver who had captured his fellow Ewoks from Endor.  Kazbich tracked him to a salvage group, Bothan Debris Inc., and their leader, the Trandoshan scavenger Ssorku.  Ssorku deflects questions about Arcturus, but Kazbich bullies a weak Cathar named Crado into leading them to the Bothan Debris Inc. headquarters.  Ssorku admits that Arcturus had joined his salvage operation, but was believed dead in a rakghoul attack in the Undercity (Ssorku has a salvage license to legally travel to the otherwise quarantined Undercity).  It's believed he had a datapad of his business deals on his person.

Rek, Gobmush, Logger and Kazbich decide to head to the Undercity as part of the salvage operation to see if they can find Arcturus' datapad.  The team of 18 scavengers (including the four party members) walks a half-hour through sewer tunnels before arriving at a large open underground plain of wreckage, then splits into three groups of six to fan out and try to find good salvage; Ssorku has learned that there are Mandalorian and Republic ships crashed down there from the Mandalorian Wars.

Dhiel waits in Javyar's cantina in the Lower City, not willing to go on the trip, and hangs out with Gobmush's droid.  Gobmush provides Dhiel with the name of his contact, GE-3-RX-34, and after some rough negotiations, Dhiel solicits RX-34 for the location of his Mandalorian father, him being a war orphan.

While raiding the machine shop of a crashed Mandalorian troop transport, the party is attacked by rakghouls, but a well-lobbed grenade by Kazbich kills most of them.  Logger finds humanoid tracks and manages to avoid being surprised by a rakghoul hunting party, which is swiftly slaughtered by the party.  The tracks lead to a grisly rakghoul nest where they dragged their victims back and dismembered them.  Rek finds Arcturus' datapad inside the carnage.

The PCs meet back up with Ssorku's group, only to find the third group is incommunicado and, unfortunately, includes the scavenger with the map back up to the surface.  Kazbich tracks them to a partially functioning Republic Hammerhead cruiser, but when Ssorku tries to reach them on the comlink, all he gets are rakghoul howls.  They travel through the interior of the ship, only to come upon a magnetically sealed door in the crew quarters.  Kazbich hacks it to gain access to the lounge, provoking an attack by six rakghouls, including the former map-carrying salvager.  Another salvager is bitten and infected in the attack, but the party is able to kill them, and Kazbich convinces Ssorku to let him kill the infected salvager before he becomes a rakghoul.

Fixing up Sair Arcturus' datapad, Logger learns that he sold the Ewoks to a buyer on the planet Myzil 5.

The Clone Wars

Son of a bitch.

I am forced to admit that I kind of like the new Clone Wars cartoon, which is not perfect, but kind of charming, at least in the first two episodes.

New uses for the Force

Man, I have been really bad about posting on here lately.  I'm going to be trying to get content on here more often to keep people coming back, starting with this.

I was thinking about the old West End Games version of the Star Wars RPG, and they had some Force abilities that have been either forgotten or don't translate into flashy, well-known uses.  (It bears noting that West End wrote sourcebooks for a lot of the older novels, so more obscure uses are in there.)  In the interest of keeping the Force interesting, here are a few new uses of the Use the Force skill that don't require any special talent or feat to use (only the Contortion ability is Trained Only; the others can be used untrained):

• Contortion (Trained Only).  You can use the Force to escape bonds by contorting in painful and difficult (but physically possible) ways.  By dislocating joints and the like, a Force-user can escape almost any physical restraining device.  You may make a Use the Force check instead of an Acrobatics check to escape bonds; however, each use of this ability deals 3d6 damage to you.  This ability requires one minute to use and cannot be used to escape a grapple.
  
• Memory Enhancement.  While in a trance, you can replay recent events in order to more carefully examine images and peripheral objects.  Using this power, a Force-user can freeze images and even scan memory tracks to recall details that were seen but did not register consciously at the time of observation.  You must use this power while in a Force trance; this ability takes one hour to use.  The DC is as follows: DC 20 to remember anything that happened in the current game session (or three days); DC 25 to remember anything that happened in the previous session (or one week); DC 30 to remember anything from the session previous to that (or two weeks).  Beyond that, most short-term memories have been forgotten, and a Force-user would need to use the Visions talent to see into the past.
  
• Postcognition.  You can sense the imprints of the Force left on objects when they are handled by living beings.  This ability allows you to gain vague impressions of who has used the item or where it has been; it does not provide a clear vision of the past.  (The near-human Kiffar race of the planet Kiffex is the only known species to be able to see perfectly into the past by touching an object in this manner.)  The character must be able to handle or touch the target object.  This ability takes five minutes to use, during which time you are in a trance.  The DC is as follows: 15 for events in the same day or week; 20 for events in the same month; 25 for events within the past year; 30 for events older than the past year.
  
• Weather Sense.  You can attune yourself to the workings of local weather patterns by sensing the movements of clouds, winds, tides and solar bodies to make limited predictions regarding the behavior of atmospheric phenomena, though this attunement takes time.  This ability takes one minute to use.  The DC is 20 minus the number of weeks you have lived in the area, and the prediction is effective for the next four hours.  You can also extend the time you use this ability to 15 minutes to predict natural disasters, such as quakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, landslides, avalanches, cave-ins, mine subsidences, fires, and even dangerous storms, tornadoes and hurricanes.  The DC is the same, and the prediction is effective for the next 12 hours.