Taking into account that I am not very familiar with any d20 games, so I'm not coming at this from a D&D 3+ perspective, what are your thoughts on Star Wars Saga Edition? What did it do well? Which parts of it didn't work? How did it do compared to WEG Star Wars? Etc.

I'm not looking for comparisons to FFG Star Wars.

1) It is a level-based system. Even with Feats and Talents, you don't have as much control over the growth of your character as in d6. That can be a feature or a bug, mattering on your play style.

2) I particularly liked Jedi powers being encounter-based. It makes sense why even in the movies, they didn't just spam Force Powers all day.

3) Lightsaber damage is static; I can't tell you how happy this makes me.

4) Starship combat moved away from "a team on a tramp freighter" to "everyone in his own fighter". I prefer the former to the latter, so it's been a downgrade for me.

5) Feats, and especially Talents, allow for wildly different characters even with only 5 archetypes.

Overall, I like the game.

The pluses for me:

• The five base classes.
• The three defense scores.
• The condition track.
• Talents seem pretty cool and useful for the most part.
• The skill system, particularly reducing the number of skills and how they handled proficiency.
• The armor rules.

The minuses:

• Wonky math on the attack/defense scores as you progress.
• The Jedi are very proficient from the get-go with their powers. You could have a Use The Force skill over +10 from the start (+2-4 Cha, +5 skill proficiency, +5 skill focus).
• The starship combat system is broken at the capital ship level. I haven't actually ran any combats myself, but I've read this in multiple places.

Some fixes might be reducing the skill proficiency bonus to +3. Reduce the Skill Focus to +3 and give it a prerequisite of level 6+. The attack/defense issue would need a little more work.

It's a cool system though. I wish they had used more of it in D&D 4e but that might have broken too many sacred cows.

Bottom line for me is the Star Wars Saga Edition did not feel like I was playing in the Star Wars setting as much as WEG d6 Star Wars RPG did. WEG just emulates the genre better for my taste.

Quote from: jeff37923;736883Bottom line for me is the Star Wars Saga Edition did not feel like I was playing in the Star Wars setting as much as WEG d6 Star Wars RPG did. WEG just emulates the genre better for my taste.

Do you have any idea why that is? Deadliness, whiff factor, probabilty distribution?

Overall, how rules-light would you say the game is, compared to WEG D6? And compared to, say, Savage Worlds or Unisystem?

Quote from: Endless Flight;736869The pluses for me:

• The three defense scores.
• The condition track.
• The armor rules.

The minuses:

• Wonky math on the attack/defense scores as you progress.

I'm almost completely unfamiliar with d20. Could you elaborate a bit on these?

Quote from: Endless Flight;736869• The Jedi are very proficient from the get-go with their powers. You  could have a Use The Force skill over +10 from the start (+2-4 Cha, +5  skill proficiency, +5 skill focus).

Do you feel they are too proficient, compared to what we see in the source material?

I liked it.

It was a pretty cool evolution of d20 that worked pretty well for the more high-octane EU/Prequel version of Star Wars.

It eventually collapsed under it's own weight but if you are very conservative about splats it's not a bad system.

Quote from: Piestrio;736901I liked it.

It was a pretty cool evolution of d20 that worked pretty well for the more high-octane EU/Prequel version of Star Wars.

It eventually collapsed under it's own weight but if you are very conservative about splats it's not a bad system.

From what I read the core rulebook was pretty complete by itself. Are any of the splat/sourcebooks "required" to play?

Quote from: 3rik;736904From what I read the core rulebook was pretty complete by itself. Are any of the splat/sourcebooks "required" to play?

No, but some of them are pretty cool.

Quote from: Piestrio;736907No, but some of them are pretty cool.

Well, you're gonna need a nice selection of robots, aliens and ships. How complete is the corebook in that regard? I'd be primarily interested in material for the original trilogy.

Is there a lot of extra rules in them? I really hate when they do that.

Quote from: 3rik;736910Well, you're gonna need a nice selection of robots, aliens and ships. How complete is the corebook in that regard? I'd be primarily interested in material for the original trilogy.

Is there a lot of extra rules in them? I really hate when they do that.

Yup.

New talents, new feats, new races, new, new, new, new...

Quote from: 3rik;736898Do you have any idea why that is? Deadliness, whiff factor, probabilty distribution?

Primarily combats. The Saga combat system feels more like D&D with science fiction gear duct-taped to it then the WEG combat system did. Hit points and Con didn't compare favorably to how WEG handles scaling, damage, and resistance to damage. All to often in personal combat, Saga was drawn out and lengthy where WEG d6 was fast and furious without ignoring actions like dodge and parry.

Quote from: 3rik;736898Overall, how rules-light would you say the game is, compared to WEG D6? And compared to, say, Savage Worlds or Unisystem?

Saga was rules-heavy in comparison to WEG d6, I would say. Creating starships and NPCs took up a lot of time with Saga.

WEG d6 is elegant and simpler to pick up than is Savage Worlds. I do not have enough experience with Unisystem to give an informed opinion on that one.

Oh, and check your message inbox.

Quote from: 3rik;736904From what I read the core rulebook was pretty complete by itself. Are any of the splat/sourcebooks "required" to play?

I would be careful not to use too many of the sourcebooks as they do generally work against all that's good in the corebook. I would recommend Starships of the Galaxy though, both as a way of making starship combat interesting, but also providing a way to make transports combat capable and one of the best ways of dealing with capital ships.

Star Wars Saga Edition is a good RPG IMO and does the following things better than other attempts:
- providing a greater range of Star Wars action,
- handling higher levels of power, and
- balancing the character options especially Jedi.

Though it excelled at using minis, they could be ignored as desired.

Its main issues were that the supplements buried it, high level play (level 14+) was still difficult and the math was borked as to Defences and Use the Force.

Quote from: Skywalker;736918Its main issues were that the supplements buried it, high level play (level 14+) was still difficult and the math was borked as to Defences and Use the Force.

Yeah, I never got to play high level but it felt like the same kind of trajectory that most d20 games had.

The force was pretty easy to reign in simply by disallowing Skill Focus: Use the Force.