Fwurg

[Mercury]

Clarification:

She kicked herself into a twist back flip, allowing the droid's blades to pass over and under her body while she made a full twist. After half a twist she arced out her saber, using the force of the twist to turn her aerial dodge into a fierce slash into the droid's right shoulder.

He then pressed the advantage and went in close behind the droid to launch a precision strike against the joint in the very center of the droids body, hoping to cut the droid in half.

These, a detailed slash as part of a dodge, or a precision strike with a saber, are regular attacks, not Direct Combat Actions. While I absolutely want to promote people taking the effort to properly describe their attack above and beyond "I slash at the enemy with my lightsaber", this is already covered by the roleplay bonus.

In general, the idea is that anything which basically amounts to "use primary weapon on enemy" is a regular attack. Anything that provides a bonus, would at the very least require a check.

Some examples of Direct Combat actions using manoeuvres, tricks and melee attacks respectively:

"Excuse me master" Anakin jumped off of the balcony, plummeting down towards the ground at high speed. After ten seconds in free fall, he crashlanded on top of the vehicle in which the assassin was trying to get away, using the Force to soften his landing but only just enough to stop himself from being crushed, not enough to reduce the impact of the considerable force his landing put behind his blade.

Here Anakin makes a regular attack (with his blade), but he also adds a significant influence to it by making a risky jumping manoeuvre (which requires a check).

He might have been knocked to the ground, but the Dark Jedi wouldn't let himself be conquered so easily. "Eat my dirt!" he called out, using the force to cause a cloud of sand to fly into his enemies eyes and using the distraction to roll to the side. As he rolled, he activating his lightsaber in one smooth motion, slashing to cut off the hand his opponent had held out.

Here the dark jedi uses a dirty trick to get sand in his opponents eyes. Tossing sand in someone's eyes requires a check since it affects someone else in a significant way.

The short charge Ayla made towards her opponent was as swift as it was brutal as she moved to ram her shoulder into her opponents belly, following up with a piercing saber, trying to use the opening her bull rush created to get the blade in

A melee attack can be an attack in and of itself. However, in this case, the actual attack is the use of the lightsaber - the use of the melee attack is a supporting move to actively create an opening (note that this is different from using an existing opening of which the enemy will likely be aware and able to compensate / anticipate on).

Likewise, you could use an off-hand blaster or even a grenade to support a lightsaber attack. In theory, you could use a lightsaber to support an attack by another weapon - in that case, the other weapon would be the attack and the lightsaber would be the distraction / creation of an opening for the other weapon, but as a general rule lightsabers have the lead.

Does this clarify somewhat the Direct Combat Action requirement? The idea is that this kind of thing will take the lightsaber battle to beyond just swinging sabers and adding numbers and require some creative thinking and use of terrain to gain an advantage. If it turns out that this is too complicated, or battles become a series of secondary actions, I'm open to allowing saber moves to be included in Direct Combat Actions, but I'd like to see it without that first.

[Veolian Commonwealth]

I think I see where you want to go with this. But I do not understand the whole of it yet:

1. I'm missing how Shebi Ajava's dodge is different than Anakin's plunge. She dodges the double attack by actually jumping in between them which requires tremendous skill (and luck). In my mind this is not just 'a detailed slash as part of a dodge'; that would imply that this is a normal dodge?! The risk is really high, just like 'adds a significant influence to it by making a risky jumping manoeuvre (which requires a check)'. If she fails to execute the acrobatics (i.e., fails the check) she will not be able to block both of the droid's sabers, as she is neatly in between them with only a single saber (and thus she will most likely end up being skewered in between the droid's sabers, resulting in the scenario I raise in the second question).
   
   She uses the momentum the acrobatic move gives her to execute an attack and she uses the weird position granted to her by an executed trick to attack the droid from inside of his sabers slash radius.
   
2. I'm afraid that any melee attack will result in highly efficient saber-assisted removal of the offending body part. (Which is part of why I think that the acrobatic move by Shebi as actually a direct combat action -- it requires some skill to execute such a dangerous acrobatic stunt in actual combat, and failure will result in getting disable at least, and sliced in two at worst...)
   
   A character can not be better than the other in (for example) melee attacks like kicks, leg sweeps, bull-rushes or sand throwing, as combat-related skills do not exist. So what check should we use for such an action; just Force Level? Or is this actually an attack (it is in my opinion), which will just result in the aforementioned scenario, with your bull-rush against their lightsaber based 'block' defence (effectively ending your participation in combat).

And yes I'm a bit afraid that (since everyone wants as much bonus as possible and a +2 bonus is significant) this interpretation might lead to everyone trying something every single round of combat. I expect we'll see a lot of Jedi walking around with blasters, throwing rocks, pouches of reflective nanite dust, etc., just to gain the advantage when combat rears it's head.

[Mercury]

The dodge is a defensive action - a response to the attack by the droid (other possible defences would be jumping backwards and out of the reach of the droid btw). You don't have to test for acrobatics to prevent being sliced in twain - your defence score already includes that.

The Direct Combat Action doesn't just have to be risky - (purchasing greek bonds is risky but doesn't provide a bonus either), it has to actually help what you are trying to accomplish. I can see a dodge bonus for the acrobatics, but I don't really see how it helps to get a better slashing attack.

If people really want to maximize their bonuses, making awesome roleplay posts is a much better strategy than bringing lots of stuff. I might give someone a roleplay bonus for using sand in a desert-industrial environment, but if they use their home-brought reflective nanopowder, I doubt I'd give them a roleplay bonus, since its not really creative roleplay to use your equipment in the way it was intended. Then again, I'm not sure I'll mind the occasional batman, if people feel that makes them cool.

I think a melee attack would involve a Strength check. I do agree that some sort of melee system needs to be implemented however, not sure if skill based or Combat Style based (or both?) yet.

That being said: keep in mind that this is not free form roleplay - as such, your description of your actions is not the final determinant in whether or not you survive or not. Please do try to make your survival a priority in your descriptions (If you consistently refuse to defend yourself, I'll apply a roleplay penalty), but just because you fail to notice the attack comes from the left and you accidentally dodge to a swing on the right doesn't mean you get cut in half. In the end, its the numbers that decide if your defence is successful.

I have some extensive experience with Star Wars free form combat where descriptions were leading and it gets very nasty especially when players are unclear on their environment, position, etc. Characters get killed over a misread description, over a failure to state that they finished their jump by landing somewhere, etc. Its bad. I definitely don't want that.

[Veolian Commonwealth]

Ok; I see how that would make sense.

As a side note: I was fiddling around with a low leg sweep (actually thought that one up on the first post, hence the 'repositioning of feet for the next attack' thingy) to get the droid off-balance before Shebi Ajava made upward cut. I changed my idea once the double-slice came up, thinking that would actually be a better stunt (and not having any stats that support melee attacks and fearing an immediate de-legification)... Tell me, would the leg sweep have worked as a DCA?

[Mercury]

A leg sweep would work as a DCA, especially in this case where the stones are slippery and wet - pushing that point home in addition to the sweep might even have earned an additional roleplay and/or circumstance bonus on top of the DCA.

[Veolian Commonwealth]

One last point regarding DCA's:

Do you have to claim the DCA yourself every time? The roleplay bonus is (obviously) not claimed by the player, but awarded by the DM. However, I foresee a lot of situations in which the DM has to go 'no DCA for you this time' because a player claimed DCA but the DM did not think this fitting.

Although some form of check is involved it has not been easy for me as player to actually judge what would make a good DCA (as seen from the leg-sweep idea). Even with the examples above it might not be clear what actually constitues a good DCA.

Because of this uncertainty I (and others as well) will probably adopt either the 'never mind' (if it seems that most of my tricks get shut down) or the 'try it every turn' (if I think that a lot of the things I might try might qualify) strategy; this might not be the exact thing you had in mind when designing DCA's.

[Mercury]

I considered that same point, but at the moment its speculation as to which of the two (if any) would happen.

For now, please claim the bonus you want. That has two effects: 1 - it allows you to see when your action is effective and when it is not, thus becoming familiar with what works and what doesn't, and 2 - it allows me to learn what actions players want to take and get a feel for what I can do with it.

I know its not a very satisfying answer from a Computer Science point of view, but I think doing some of this by feeling and adjusting depending on what works and what doesn't is better than to guestimate and get it after committing to the course. So for at least this test, I'm going with post what you want to claim. Afterwards, I'll analyse and maybe change.