Star Wars: Legacy RPG

Game Master's Notes - On the Survival of the Knighthunter

6 March 2013

This game master's note asks a critical question: did the Knighthunter survive?

Porindrrl is a Wookie Knighthunter. Knighthunters typically work in packs of three to six, with a Sith lord as commander. This particular group is made up of only three Knighthunters, plus the Sith.

To find their quarry, the group split up along the four cardinal directions. As soon as Porindrrl located the Kel Dor Jedi they were after, he transmitted a message to his master. Thus, the entire party began converging on his position. They're all pretty spread out, but they all have speeder bikes, so let's say five minutes, six on the outside.

Porindrrl gets the Jedi outside to detain him, but this is where things get moving quickly. He's beset on two sides by the Jedi's companions, one of which is also using Force powers! Porindrrl transmits this data to his master as well, all while he's fighting for his life.

The Jedi realize that they are outmatched, so they send for their ride. When it arrives, they use the docking guns on Porindrrl. Little effect - his power armor is made to take far worse. So when the Jedi jump on board, Porindrrl makes to follow.

But Porindrrl's jetpack thrusters are no comparison to a full starship. He uses his slave circuits to call his speeder bike, which allows him to give some semblance of a chase. He doesn't expect to actually catch them, but keeping them in sight might allow his master to intercept their ship, or at least to upload the ship's profile and transponder codes to the Imperial database.

But then the ship opens fire with its main guns.

The ion cannons are kind of a strange thing in Star Wars, and there's no real comparison to anything like them in the real world. The closest might be a localized electromagnetic pulse, which would basically overload the circuits and make the electronics worthless.

Ion damage is different, though, in that the damage can be repaired (somehow). In some cases, the ion damage wears off on its own, and so long as the target is allowed some time to recover, they can be back up and running with little to no detrimental effects. In other cases, the damage is permanent until the systems can be completely replaced.

For the sake of my sanity, we'll go with the second definition here. So the ion blast took the speeder out of the sky, and enough splash damage hit Porindrrl and knocked out his suit.

At this point, both Porindrrl and the speeder are about thirty stories up, or about 300 - 400 feet, traveling around two hundred miles per hour.

The lack of a speeder bike - or any kind of powered flight at all, really - introduces vertical motion. According to the Wookiepedia, Nar Shaddaa has roughly "normal" gravity, so we can assume the same 32 feet-per-second acceleration rate as on Earth.

Porindrrl is already starting to slow down dramatically - that is, horizontally. His parabolic arc has reached its apex, and it's literally all downhill from here. We can effectively ignore his lateral motion and focus purely on his vertical drop.

About how fast would Porindrrl hit the ground? Well, we don't have to worry about terminal velocity; a skydiver on earth reaches that after about 1500 feet, and Porindrrl doesn't have that far to fall. So to make the math easier, let's ignore air resistance.

Accelerating at 32 feet per second:
1st second: 0 ft/second, 0 feet fallen
2nd second: 32 ft/second, 32 feet fallen
3rd second: 64 ft/second, 96 feet fallen
4th second: 96 ft/second, 192 feet fallen
5th second: 128 ft/second, 320 feet fallen

Thus, we can see that it takes less than one round (in D&D terms) to fall thirty stories. This gives Porindrrl few options, and, unfortunately for him, no one packed a parachute on his power armor.

128 ft/s is approximately 87 mph, and ends with a complete stop. All downward velocity is canceled as Porindrrl hits the ground. But is that necessarily immediately fatal?

Not necessarily, though it wouldn't be pretty. Barring a "soft" surface like water, most people in car crashes at those speeds (the only real-world equivalent I could find) die within minutes. A few survive a few hours, but only in a coma.

Airbags actually help very little in this kind of situation, though they are credited with making what would be a fatal crash into one that merely leaves the driver a vegetable. (It turns out air bags are designed for crashes below 40 mph. Who knew?)

Power armor is designed to be able to take heavy blows, be it from blaster fire, melee weapons, or even concussion grenades. So there would have to be some kind of kinetic mitigation. Most of it would probably rely on the "power" part of "power armor," but at least some of that would be part and parcel of just wearing the armor itself.

But in the Star Wars universe, that could be enough. His master would arrive on the scene within minutes, keep him alive through the Force, and plop the big guy in a Bacta tank.

What about that master, anyway? If Porindrrl notified his master as soon as the Jedi was discovered, the entire team would begin converging on his location. They could arrive just in time to see his speeder blasted out of the sky and, depending on the Sith's mastery of the Force, be able to slow his fall down to a survivable velocity.

But not too much.

Sure, it's within the Sith Lord's capabilities to save Porindrrl outright, with barely a scratch. But which is more useful: saving the Wookie, who already has a life-debt to you anyway, but his loyalty to you goes up a few notches; OR have the Wookie make an incredibly rough landing, pick up the pieces, introduce some cybernetics, replace the pain with anger and hatred, and use this weapon in his hunt of the Jedi?

As a Sith Lord, this is a tough call, and it has to be made in the space of a second, or the decision will be made for him. And Sith hate having options taken away from them.