[TSL] Toughen em up! or alternatives

[Wedge Suron]

Notes: I don't like a normal game, as you might have noticed from my frequent requests of unbalanced things, . But, this request is for the better of Te Taylir Mand'alor(AKA Mandalore the Preserver/Canderous Ordo)'s forces.

 

Request

 

Could someone improve the Mandalorians a bit like improve stats, give them feats, because I've just had enough of them falling like logs against the Sith Assassins during the battle. It's laughable and downright disrespectful that they fall so easily. The named ones just have low health and don't actually die. For a race of warriors, they sure do go down fast, admittedly it is a little bugged in that the game gives them an infinate supply of assassins to fight.

 

Levels

 

add 10 levels to all unnamed Mandalorians

add 16 levels to all of the Named ones except Xarga and Bralor

add 20 levels to Xarga and Bralor

 

Permanant Attribute boost

 

I don't know their current stats, but could someone add 20 to Strength, Dexterity and Constitution of all guards and random Mandalorians that don't have names in their ingame tags. 26 of each to Kelborn, Tagren, Kumus, Zuka, Kex and Davrel, 30 of each to Xarga and Bralor. Mandalore isn't as important as I can boost him up myself with cheats. Sure, this'll make it really tougher if not nearly impossible for us to face em in the Battle Circle, but it'll improve the chances of more of the unnamed ones surviving the battle.

 

Feats to all

 

Toughness 1 through 3

Duelling 1 through 3

The feat that slowly Regenerates health

Melee weapons 1 through 3

Flurry

Critical Strike

 

Armour

 

Dexterity blockage that is on most Mandalorian Armours removed

Regeneration + 5 to all

 

Alternatives, one or all indeed. These can be added too if you want

 

Turrets around the perimeter to assist cut them down

War Droids to defend the perimeter

 

Reasons for this request: I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but they do actually go down quite fast. I'm always one for extra EXP, so I go assist them and I noticed them go down faster than ever recently. Even the Gate Guard Captain has gone down a couple of times on me. Anything that helps the Mandalorians in the battles will be great. I'm not an overall Mandalorian fan, sure they're good warriors. But the ones at the base are a joke to say the least.

 

My reccomended mods to use in counterance to this

 

Jedi Robe Stat Boost - if you want a way to counter them I reccomend the Dark Jedi Master robes that this mod modifies -

 

Other reccomendations

 

Class: Jedi Guardian or Jedi Weaponmaster, either of these will help a lot

 

Request to any one that takes this up

 

A mere request, is a mention in your thanks for the suggestion, or indeed just as a mention of me requesting it and it uploaded to KOTORFiles incase I lose the link or you decide to leave the forums.

[VarsityPuppet]

I've been planning a Dxun tweak, and I could probably include something like this in the mod. I can't say that I'll follow your requests EXACTLY to the letter, but I will solve this whole "generic mandalorians dying too easily" issue.

[Azzameen]

Oh, I'm waiting for this.

Mandalorians should be hard to kill. Their armour is lightsabre resistant, for the love of evil!

And the Assassins, they don't even have Force Powers. Mando'ade kill an army of them before breakfast.

[Wedge Suron]

exactly, how can Mandalorians kill 10 Republics to one on Dxun during the Mandalorian wars yet they can't kill an army of Sith Assassins. The attributes are of course up to you, but some kind of boost would be nice. The feats would be a bonus

[Q]

How about supplying all of them with weapons, recruits included? I guess that they'd have to become armed via a script when the assassins first spawn, but it would make sense that the Mandos would have blasters and swords handy in case of attack.

[Wedge Suron]

They do actually spawn weapons during the battle. Weapons aren't the problem, admittedly the recruits could do with weapons too. But, they need something to back those weapons up.

[Azzameen]

Yeah. It's not having the weapons, it's knowing how to use them.

[Wedge Suron]

Toughness should be a definate. Dueling gives a small defense bonus.

[VarsityPuppet]

Yeah. It's not having the weapons, it's knowing how to use them.

 

Ain't it true.

 

Let's remember that these are Sith Assassins though. They are trained to... well assassinate. Republic soldiers for the most part are just lackeys and cannon fodder for the mandos.

 

 

Either way, seeing as how things are turning out, the Sith Assassins would very likely just... well FAIL completely against Mandalorians.

 

Do you think it could be productive to add actual Sith Soldiers (maybe commandos) to the battle?

I mean after all, they are in the vicinity, and you'd think that it would make more sense to send soldiers to fight soldiers no?

 

Anyways, just a thought.

[Wedge Suron]

If I was rping the battle, I'd get suspicous if Sith Troopers turned up. At least Assassins and their stealth fields would be easier.

[VarsityPuppet]

Fair enough. This is going hand in hand with my Dxun tweak though, so it might be awhile until it's actual complete. You never know though, sometimes I just get carried away and finish a mod within the day.

[Wedge Suron]

As I said, KOTORFiles would be a good place to make sure people don't lose track of it.

[vanir]

Keep in mind the Mando base is a low level training camp. The average Mando there is either a 1st level Soldier class or a low level generic minion transitioning to the Soldier class.

The Sith Assassins are specialised high level elite troops.

 

Agreed the Mando instructors need to be tweaked, they're probably using a generic minor boss script with minion tables where they should be classed uti's with full feat selection.

 

It's the same problem with the Sion and Nihilus uti's, which are generic Jedi Guardian and Jedi Sentinel templates modified by the autobalance.2da for the encounter, and to balance them properly you have to modify the uti's for the encounter modules with Sith Marauder and Sith Assassin prestige class feats and abilities, and reselect their powers more appropriately.

 

changing class level on the uti's has no effect since their level during the encounter is decided by the balancing scripts and uti's, and just slapping them with extreme attribute scores is too arcadish and unimaginative to help gameplay much at all.

[VarsityPuppet]

Keep in mind the Mando base is a low level training camp. The average Mando there is either a 1st level Soldier class or a low level generic minion transitioning to the Soldier class.

The Sith Assassins are specialised high level elite troops.

 

Agreed the Mando instructors need to be tweaked, they're probably using a generic minor boss script with minion tables where they should be classed uti's with full feat selection.

 

It's the same problem with the Sion and Nihilus uti's, which are generic Jedi Guardian and Jedi Sentinel templates modified by the autobalance.2da for the encounter, and to balance them properly you have to modify the uti's for the encounter modules with Sith Marauder and Sith Assassin prestige class feats and abilities, and reselect their powers more appropriately.

 

changing class level on the uti's has no effect since their level during the encounter is decided by the balancing scripts and uti's, and just slapping them with extreme attribute scores is too arcadish and unimaginative to help gameplay much at all.

 

I knew it was wise to request your help vanir.

[vanir]

Not being any expert on canon for the Mando culture, but I think also the idea behind the armour design for Mando's in Kotor were that the ones you encounter are not part of the Fett clan, which has its own distinctive armour.

 

I think the idea in Kotor I was that all the Mandalorians you meet were part of one particular clan, with their own signature armour and fighting style (using stealth instead of integrated weapons and rocket packs).

 

The Fett clan has its own distinctive armour, according to canon as expensive as a small starship for each individual suit. Obviously the Fett clan are few in number but each is a high value combatant. They're probably best thought of as Mando aristocrats.

 

TSL kind of dropped the ball here by assuming the Mando armour in Kotor was for all the Mandalorians of that time period, but this is an erroneous presumption in technological terms. Essentially not that much had changed in several thousand years. The Hyperdrive engine was introduced 25,000 BBY and that's how long the Galactic Republic has been around. The difference between the Kotor period and the OT period is like that between Vietnam and today, F-14 Tomcats and nuclear supercarriers appeared at the end of Vietnam you know.

 

Blaster technologies essentially became man-portable about 8,000 BBY and that was also when the first lightsabres had appeared. By the Kotor period of 4,000 BBY most blasters were large and heavy but no less powerful than the OT period, and if you paid extra for miniaturisation you could procure (at high cost) something basically identical to the better models of the OT period (like the DL44, mass produced around the Battle of Yavin but more significant of a custom piece of tech in 4,000 BBY).

 

So Fett armour could definitely be around in the Kotor time period and probably was but only among one particular, extremely wealthy clan of small numbers, the Fett clan. They were probably tough as nails Mando aristocrats.

 

So the TSL canon of "uniting the clans under Mandalore" infers that we should see a series of very different Mandalorian armour styles, one for each specific clan.

We only saw the one clan in K1 which has large numbers and is widely spread, the different clans we encounter in TSL should really have unique armour styles for that particular clan (the ones you meet on Dantooine, also the ones you meet at Nar Shadaa).

 

The Mando's at Dxun however would therefore be from the same clan as K1.

 

===========================================================

 

All that being said, I've an idea for some cosmetic mod addition to any Mando tweak in TSL, that could include the awesome "Movie Mandalorians" mod which I truly love. All that Fett armour at Dxun is just awesome to see. Permissions of course would have to be gained.

 

But if the "movie mandalorians" mod is used in conjunction with some entry rescripts for the Mandalorians we encounter at Dantooine and Nar Shadaa, what we do is have those Mando's (at Dantooine and Nar Shadaa) using the old Kotor style clan armour.

 

Then it really looks like Mandalore is "uniting the (different) Mandalorian clans" under one banner.

[Azzameen]

The style of armour during KotOR and TSL has nothing to do with the clan (although it was a nice idea).

It's that during the Mandalorian Wars, the average Mando had their own armour design for their own needs. There have been really weird things, but it worked. Then, with the recruitment numbers of the Mandalorians going up, and custom armour was almost completely impossible to construct in the short amount of time, Cassus Fett introduced the Neo-Crusader armour to Mand'alor. These armour suits were uniform, with the colour showing off the "rank" of the soldier in the Mandalorian forces.

 

The movie era Mandos wore armour with a standardized helmet and plate pattern, but with individual colour schemes, extras, and stuff like that.

 

Coming back to the Sith Assassins, there's another reason why they should fail miserably: They're fighting with metal sticks against beskar armour that's designed to withstand blaster shots and lightsabres.

You could also try to destroy a tank with a M-16.

[vanir]

Coming back to the Sith Assassins, there's another reason why they should fail miserably: They're fighting with metal sticks against beskar armour that's designed to withstand blaster shots and lightsabres.

You could also try to destroy a tank with a M-16.

 

Ahh, the age old RPG argument. How is it my +5 elven plate of mythril alloy could ever possibly take damage from a farmer with a wood and bone pick?!

 

Gamemaster response: it can't, but you can whilst wearing it. This is because armour does not provide a closed universe for its wearer although it may make them feel like it does. It does not take you to another universe where you are no longer affected by standard and mundane melee combat, even against low level opponents armed with very ordinary weapons.

 

What you say about the armour is true, in most d20 RPG the damage to armour isn't modelled at all and suits of armour are for all intents and purposes indestructable. The only damage model for armour itself commonly used is the creature-treasure rule: generally speaking the rigors of combat make most items used by an opponent useless for looting, only a handful of carried items usually survive the awesomeness of facing a Player Character in mortal combat.

 

Some Gamemasters do model equipment damage to weapons and armour, and you have to frequently repair them and find the resources/skills to do so. Most don't because it's encumbering to the gameplay. The system is the bludgeoning/piercing/slashing rule and armour damage modifiers for construction material versus weapon material (so all armour will have three AC ratings, one for bludgeoning, one for piercing, etc.). It gets tedious.

 

One must keep in mind, each combat round represents six seconds of vigorous activity. Every "to Hit roll" doesn't represent one physical swing of a weapon, but six seconds of ducking, weaving, feinting, parrying or dodging and swinging or weapons discharge. The number of attacks in a round you have represents the number of times there is a reasonable chance to score damage on your opponent in this time. The blaster fire animations in TSL are excellent for demonstrating this, you'll notice that PC's with 1 attack per round will discharge their blaster at least twice per combat round though only one shot has a any chance of hitting (hit the "autopause at end of combat round" to see this in game).

 

This is the key to understanding d20 RPG combat visually. The truth is even during a round where you score no successful "Hit rolls" you do in fact hit the opponent several times, it's just that his armour deflects most of these hits harmlessly (or he moves by reflex and is real hard to pin down and score damage on). Even most scored damage in fact represents simply how much you have worn down your opponent during that round, even successful damage doesn't necessarily mean you injured your opponent as much as wore him down a bit.

 

So the high AC rating of good armour represents that much of the time hits are scored but cannot damage the armour wearer.

 

This brings us to a high hit rating. Lots of bonuses means you're exceptionally experienced (or instinctively talented, or have special weapon properties, special abilities, etc.). There are weak spots in even the most expensive and heaviest suits of armour, there are joins, visors, gaps in the plates, thin areas prone to piercing damage, and these things can be penetrated by even mundane objects like a knife. If you have very high hit bonuses it represents that you are extremely experienced in scoring these places consistently during the combat round. It says that even heavy armour won't protect an enemy very much from you, such are your combat skills.

 

Now let's look at the weapons in the Star Wars galaxy, they're nothing like an M-16 and even a knife is as advanced as that amazing suit of armour you're wearing.

This is because even plain swords and knives are made from hyperalloys that would make an Earthling Bowie Knife seem like a blunted piece of copper by comparison. Picture a titanium-alloy, razor sharp katana that's as light as a feather and deadly enough to cleave ordinary steel in half with a flick of the wrist. That's just the average Star Wars galaxy sword because that's the average tech level of industry in the civilised galaxy. The really funky ones will have blades of transparisteel, computer engineered design for balance and shape or durasteel edge inserts and so forth.

 

Which brings us to the Forcepike. A polycarbon rod engineered for flex and strength, designed to transmit striking power to the tip where a hyperalloy blade and energy discharge system can add extra stun, lethal damage or penetration effect depending on the type (often electrical but other times a plasma discharge or other energy types).

 

Like vibroweapons, Forcepikes are specifically designed for use against tough melee opponents, like a crowd, or a dangerous alien, or an armoured soldier.

 

And as mentioned earlier, Sith Assassins are elite high level troops with special training. They have excellent hit bonuses and multiple chances of scoring damage to any opponent every combat round. Their class ability is that these bonuses multiply against Force Sensitive opponents, but even against mundane troops they are a deadly force.

 

Heavy, advanced armour is great, but highly experienced and/or well equipped or specially trained opponents still retain very good chances of wearing them down during combat. And wearing someone down is represented by scoring vitality point damage. Wear someone down enough and it doesn't matter what armour they're wearing, they become prone and you give them the coup de grâce between the plates.

[Azzameen]

Yeah, this argument is difficult.

But there's another problem with wearing down an opponent and ramm the weapon between the plates. Mandalorian flight suits are made of cloth with beskar strings woven into them. That makes it... difficult to strike them down with a hit between the plates.

Also, before the Assassins can wear the Mandos down, the Mandos unload a mag into their guts.

Or they do it like Kelborn (or was it Bralor?) and use their own cloaking devices. Not every Mando'ad on Dxun was a recruit.

[vanir]

Well there is the aforementioned issue of damage type versus armour construction. In the original d6 system by West End Games all Star Wars armour came with two armour ratings, one versus energy and one versus physical weapons.

 

It was a different system to the d20 AC rule. Probably a system you'd like better I think, one of our gaming group really preferred the d6 system.

 

You had stats in dice rather than a set value, say 2d6 Str for an average human. Your vitality was your strength rating. You got character points which you could increase your stats with as XP rewards. So increase your Str rating and your Vitality went up.

 

In addition to Vitality all characters regardless of scores had 3 Wound Points. Every time damage exceeded 3x your Vitality you recieved a Wound. Without the Force Wounds took a full day to heal and that's if you've got a Medpack. Get 3 Wounds without healing them and you're dead.

 

So the average person with 2d6 in Vitality gets hit by a 6d6 Repeating Blaster and it's likely he'll get a Wound every time. Don't charge positions mounting a Repeating Blaster.

 

Armour added to your Vitality. Stormtrooper Armour is among the most effective around, an expensive suit of heavy bounty hunter armour is equivalent. It gives +1d6 versus energy weapons and +2d6 versus physical weapons (for 3d6/4d6 total respectively to resist damage by type). This armour is encumbering however and reduces Dex by -1d6 (which reduces Dex based skills like Blaster use accordingly).

 

Most suits of armour like an armoured flight suit gives +1 pip versus energy weapons and +1d6 versus energy weapons (for 2d6+1/3d6 total respectively to resist damage by type). They do not reduce Dex though.

 

A good suit of intermediary armour, like Scout Trooper armour gives +2 vs energy/+1d6 vs physical damage.

 

Specialist armour like the Radiation Zone Trooper armour gives +1d6 vs energy and +3d6 versus physical damage, these troops are melee specialists designed to operate in high radiation zones where energy weapons cannot be used. -1d6 Dex penalty.

 

An armoured spacesuit is extremely cumbersome, +2d6 vs energy/+3d6 vs physical for a -2d6 Dex penalty, only a trained space trooper can operate in one (a basic human has his Dex reduced to zero by this suit, and can basically perform only the simplest functions and awkward movement).

 

You can get powersuits which may take away the Dex penalty from heavy armour, like some custom bounty hunter armour which is as protective as Stormtrooper armour but has no Dex penalty (the power servos give +1d6 Dex, the armour gives -1d6 Dex for a net Dex modifier of 0d6). Or some like the Corellian powersuit gives a Str bonus instead and retains the -1d6 Dex penalty (the Str bonus is not cumulative with Vitality in this case, but the armour value is). Never get hit by a soldier in a Corellian powersuit for melee damage, needless to say (2d6 Str, +2d6 vibroblade damage, +1d6 additional Str dmg for the powersuit, net of 5d6 damage versus your vitality and armour against physical, and the powersuit also adds to the melee weapon skill to hit).

 

Now there are fibrous suits of armour made by races like the Verpine using stitched alloys and so forth which provide tremendous resistance against energy weapons, but are still vulnerable to bludgeoning, some of these can give +1d6 vs energy but only +2 versus physical damage (representing its resistance to cutting and tearing but not bludgeoning). These have no Dex penalty, but if you padded it thickly so that it protected against bludgeoning (for a +1d6/+1d6 armour value) it would become cumbersome enough to give Dex penalties.

 

Finally for the Tales of the Old Republic expansion the armour of Ulic's era is listed as slightly downgraded in terms of engineering construction. A heavy suit of armour in the Old Republic is listed as +2/+1d6 vs energy/physical respectively, for a Dex penalty of -1d6. An armoured spacesuit would be +1d6/+2d6 for a -2d6 Dex penalty.

 

Different system I know, but the GM rule of thumb was for heavy older suits of armour you use the physical damage modifier for the Dex penalty. For newer suits you use the energy damage modifier for the Dex penalty.

So if a PC commissioned a custom suit of armour with 3d6 damage resistance to both energy and physical damage, such an impressive standard would have a base Dex penalty of -3d6 and send all your Dex based combat skills through the floor.

 

Hopefully you're following me there.

 

Fast forward back to the d20 system and the thing about AC ratings are again really inversely representative of vulnerability rather than the hardness of complete protection. If any suit offered complete protection in a total cocoon of indestructable metal their AC rating would be infinitive...but we know in physics such a term is known as a singularity (a mathematical error function). The fact a normal heavy suit is AC+8 represents the fact that an 8th level Soldier is experienced enough to do damage to the wearer with just about any weapon 50% of the time if the target has no Dex modifier available.

 

This could be shock damage from knocking him against something hard, the suit isn't damaged, it's not penetrated, no vulnerable locations have been hit, but the wearer has simply suffered some secondary collision damage like being in a minor car accident, and it wears on his ability to continue the fight.

Look at Obi Wan's fight with Jango Fett, flying kicks to the armoured helmet might not break his jaw but it is going to whiplash his neck.

 

And it can mean other things. Scoring Vitality damage against an armoured opponent can mean the breastplate is cracked at a weak point. Call it faulty manufacture. As mentioned if any suit of armour was perfect its armour value would be infinitive, so there is some extent of faulty manufacture from a perspective of perfection for any and every suit of armour out there.

 

Now Mando suits are pretty amazing, with as much as +13AC bonus. That's as tough as it gets, even the durasteel suits "made from the same material as used on starship hulls" don't even come close to that. The basic, standard Mandalorian battlearmour is as tough as the Durasteel heavy suit.

 

That means you need to be at least 13th level as a professional soldier or assassin or have +13 in to hit bonuses for special abilities and equipment to have a 50/50 shot at doing any damage at all to a Mandalorian in assault armour.

 

Special equipment and elite training given to Sith Assassins. Agreed standard thugs/minions should have bucklies of hitting even Mando recruits if they're armoured.

 

But even then is the "lucky shot" rule that a natural 20 always hits and a natural 1 always misses. Even an average human could give a reflexive, lucky backhander that gives some force to a stumbling Mandalorian in his armour, so that he trips, falls, twists a wrist the wrong way landing...

 

The d20 system and RPG in general using the 6-second combat round is inherently generalised. Thinking in terms of individual hits and resistance is really erroneous. It is all the breakfalling and stumbling, the knocks and bruising you get even when the battle is going well for you. Because no matter how good you are or what kind of protection you're using, that's combat for you.

 

Even IRL the very first rule of combat is no matter what, you get hit. The idea is to do more relative damage than you receive, but receiving damage cannot be avoided. Every martial arts school will teach you this, and teach you to accept it and get down to the business of disabling your opponent.

 

A lot of the time, even for highly experienced martial artists, it doesn't go as planned or imagined, or even as it should. The first rule of military protocol, nothing ever goes to plan.

 

Combat is about how much you can take, and low level combatants with the nicest equipment in the world can't take a whole lot. Mando culture is pretty harsh, I'd call it tough love at best, but face it Sith culture is downright abusive. By the time you've got to assassin status I'd say a stab in the back would probably just feel like home.

 

If you wanted to take out a Mando training camp, you could do much worse than Sith assassins to do it with, they're probably about the best choice. Sith troopers or even Sith commandos wouldn't stand a chance, they'd make the mistake of being a standup fight and the heavy armed/armoured Mandos would cut them to pieces.

Sith assassins get damage multipliers for attacking from stealth for one, Mandos might have stealth, but as the Soldier class they don't get the triple damage or more and hit bonuses for it.

 

And remember, as impressive as the armour is in SW, the weapons are just as high tech, even the melee ones. Forcepikes are hardly just metal rods.

 

I do have one suggestion though, which is an integral part of my "TSL Tweak" mod (the Patcher version I'm currently working on, compatable with TSLRCM and several other mods), is the Attack Tables in TSL were cut so that all class types use the "trained Soldier" attack tables. This is very wrong. There is an "untrained" attack table, a "trained" attack table and a "professional Soldier" attack table, and different classes are supposed to use different ones like in Kotor 1.

Sentinels, Guardians, all Prestige classes (including Sith Assassin), Combat Droids and Soldiers would all be using the same attack tables however, so it wouldn't make much difference in the Dxun battle. Except for Scout, Scoundrel, Expert Droid, Consular and Tech Specialist classes and Minions which should all have downgraded attack tables, but don't in vanilla TSL.

Personally I believe it to be a major factor in upsetting game balance, and also destroying the character of individual classes.

[Azzameen]

Yeah, whatever.

I just meant that the stats for the Mandos should be better, since their armour is very badass.

[vanir]

But this is exactly my point.

 

It's not that the Mando is too unremarkable, part of the problem is the TSL cut attack table by class type.

 

Let's say a band of Scout, Scoundrel or Minion class-types attacked the Mandalorians. In TSL there is no real differentiation, they've all got the same attack tables to the Mando's (and Soldier class in general) seems unremarkable. What should happen is any professional Soldier like the Mando's ought to be noticeably more capable of downing opponents and hit much less often in armour, than they can hit other armoured troops.

 

Tweak the attack tables and the non-Soldiering classes are suddenly 2/3 or 1/2 as capable of hitting stuff than the Mando's or other professional Soldier class-types by level. A 12th level Scout has a +8 base attack to the Mando's 12th level +12 base.

 

This still wouldn't make a difference to the Dxun Mando camp battle, Sith Assassins use Soldier attack tables like Jedi Sentinels and Guardians (in K1 Jedi Sentinels have worse tables, but Consulars are downright pathetic in combat and that doesn't follow with EU canon very well). But you'd get more of a feel elsewhere with the Soldier class versus other class types, and thugs/minions should use the Scout attack tables.

 

The thing with the Mando camp battle is that the combat tables/stats between the participants can't really be changed in keeping with core RPG rules, it is simply a matter of taking note as a player that indeed the Mando's on average can take more damage than the Sith Assassins, but neither is less capable of taking each other down irrespective of armour or equipment (and most Mando's in the battle get jumped without weapons equipped while all Sith Assassins are armed and sneak-attacking so that evens things out there).

 

I think why it stands out so much is because it reminds the player that throughout the gameplay in general, any and every class type from common thugs to Scouts and Tech Specialists are all just as good as the Soldier class in scoring hits by level. It ruins the Soldier class, making them only good for high hit points and lots of feats (which aren't a big factor in NPC encounters anyway, they only make a difference to player-controllable characters, ie. you don't get to see it demonstrated among the NPC-encounters so don't get the full atmosphere of even having different class types during combat).

 

Tweak the attack tables and Soldier classes become much tougher throughout the game without upsetting game balance (it happens inversely by other classes being more realistic).

But there's nothing you can do against Sith Assassins.

 

And what is a Mando anyway but the same sort of thing as Stormtroopers or Clone Troopers. Professional soldiers with heavy armour. But Stormtroopers go down (and tend to be tougher in EU than OT, but this is because all the main characters are hero types).

 

Mandalorians aren't aliens with special abilities like Wookiees (which have their own restrictions). They're just soldiers with heavy armour when it comes down to it. In large scale battlefield combat they're better equipped than Republic troops, so average success rate will be higher.

 

 

 

Here's how you'd fine tune the Mandalorians to make them seem more realistic, but it cannot be done with TSL.

You'd make some unique subclasses of Mandalorian Scout and Mandalorian Tech Specialist, and these would have the same attack tables as Soldiers, whilst all other Scouts and Tech Specialist classes get the reduced attack tables of canon and realism.

 

Then you'd fill the Mando camp with a variety of class types like a more realistically functioning community.

 

As a whole, during battle the Mandalorians would be pound for pound more effective in large scale battlefield conflicts, since any battalion sized engagement includes support personnel like scouts and tech specialists (whether engineers or medics).

 

Okay so here's the true difference of Mandalorians. In an 800-man Battalion every person is deadly in combat. In a regular Republic Battalion, about 600 are combat capable and the other 200 are logistics and support administration.

 

Stormtrooper organisation is set up the same way (all personnel in the Legion are front line combatants regardless of role).

 

And that's how the Mandalorians are different.

[Azzameen]

...

Could you translate that into English please?

[vanir]

The cut "attack tables by class" in vanilla TSL ruins the effectiveness of heavy armour throughout the game. Even unarmoured it allows less powerful characters to hit more powerful characters too easily (re: level based AC bonuses).

 

But this won't affect the Dxun Mando camp Battle because Sith Assassins use professional Soldier attack tables even using Core RPG rules and are attacking using "Stealthed Attack" class ability, which gives bonuses to hit and damage.

 

Mandalorians are just human Soldiers wearing heavy armour, there is nothing special about them.

 

The thing which gives Mandalorians the high reputation is that every member of a clan is a capable Soldier, even if he is a Tech Specialist he still uses Soldier attack tables. In regular military battalions only 75% of the personnel are front line combatants, the rest have downgraded attack tables because fighting is not their job.

 

So a Mandalorian clan will cut a regular military battalion to pieces in a stand up fight.

 

But this isn't modelled in vanilla TSL anyway because of the cut attack tables by class and there are no special Mandalorian subclasses for non-combat personnel.

 

And in a one-on-one confrontation a Mandalorian is still just a Soldier class human in heavy armour, if he faces another front line combatant he won't be any more special than they are in the fight.

 

What makes Mandalorians so intimidating is when a regular planet with a military fights a Mandalorian planet, you can consider the entire population to form the military so it's like trying to fight the regular military of a whole sector.

 

But at company strength they're no different to regular mercinary or military companies. No tougher except for the fact most system governments can't afford to equip all their soldiers with really nice armour.

[Wedge Suron]

so, what should we do to improve them? Could we give them Mandalorian Toughness that Mandalore has? Because, some of them are Veterans too.

[Azzameen]

Well, there's a question I have to ask now.

Are those Mandalorians single characters whose stats can be improved without touching any other characters, a character class which would do the same, or are they simply soldier characters with other uniforms (like TSF or Sith soldiers)?