During this week's Star Wars game, the young Padawans (actually most of them have reached the title of Knight, but I digress) set out to stop the fighting on Kashyyyk. Kashyyyk is the forest planet where the honorable race of Wookies live.
Kashyyyk has been ravaged harshly during the Clone Wars and another evil is going to befall them. During the rise of the Empire, Wookies are forced into slavery by their long time enemies, the Trandoshans (the lizard like aliens).
Of course the Jedi don't do well with slavery and have begun freeing as many Wookies as possible.
On top of that, one of the players in the game, my son Joel, is playing a Wookie bad ass. His character literally cuts enemies in half all day long. Joel is a crit rolling machine during the game. Overall its pretty impressive. Joel's character Nawtalon is looking for his parents and he finds that is father has been taken by slavers.
The game session starts with the party planning an ambush and rolling initiative. The enemies are numerous, several Trandoshan slavers, wielding neurolashes. One "slave driver", who is a high leveled Trandoshan with a flamethrower (fire is good against Jedi), some sick hand to hand moves and a special ability that lets him gain bonuses when others are in pain.
Throw in some stormtroopers and a couple of mercenaries and it made for an interesting encounter.
The "slave driver", as mentioned before, had a special ability I called Surrounded by Pain and Misery. Basically every time someone within 6 squares was hit and brought down the condition track by a Neurolash, he gained a +1 bonus until the end of his next turn. This is similar to the exceptions based game design which is used by 4th Edition D&D. I also gave him a disadvantage, where he would flee if his slaver minions were killed off too quickly.
In this combat I learned something interesting, Stun Batons in Star Wars stink. They don't do alot of damage (which is good) but they also don't stun anyone. The damage of the weapon is too low for it to have the effect of stunning anyone. Since I based the neurolash off of a stun baton, the lash was kind of lame.
So the party wails on the "slave driver" basically anihilating him where he stood. He tried to run but Joel's wookie cut him in half before he could get too far. With a victory in sight, I hand waved the end of the conflict, which is something I suggest happen in any game where it takes time to mop up the remaining badguys. If its a foregone conclusion that the PCs win, then just let them. Move on with the game :)
After some hacking, by uplinking to some orbiting Star Destoryers and gaining back door access to the Imperial Military Holonet, the Jedi learn that Nawtalon's father is not even on the planet anymore. Also to make matters worse, some guy named Darth Vader is headed there to eliminate a major problem (the PCs), so they decide to get out of dodge but free some more slaves first.
The only problem is...no one wants to tell Nawtalon (the super strong and tough Wookie) that his father is gone.
In the end, after a battle with a slave transport and someone shooting a speeder bike pilot, then jumping onto the moving bike, tossing the dead pilot into a tree and taking control.
Now they need to get off the planet to find Nawtalon's father.
Lessons Learned:
- Random name generators are silly; Lowdik is not a good name for a Wookie!
- Crit happens.
- Stun batons are lame (my fix is to make them do 2d6 damage, stun only. Neurolashes are exotic weapons, which inflict 2d8 damage, stun only, with a reach of 2 hexes).
- Even if you have a cool name for a character, someone will come up with a more catchier one. The picture for Nawtalon's father is a wookie with an eye patch. Immediately he was dubbed Patches and like all good names, it stuck.
That is all I have to report from my Star Wars game this week.
Tags: Star Wars Wookie Neurolash Patches
