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.
Quote from: Piestrio;736920The force was pretty easy to reign in simply by disallowing Skill Focus: Use the Force.
You need to really make it pre-requisite 7th level as without it the Force becomes too weak at higher levels.
Quote from: Skywalker;736916I 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.
This touches on something that I hated about the d20 version of Star Wars. Ships that were suppossed to be transports often had better weapons and shields than some warships as standard equipment. A transport should be a transport, not a pocket battleship. How can a repressive dictatorship like the Empire maintain control with all these heavily armed freighters flying around.
"What about the
Millenium Falcon?" If you remember, Han Solo got away with a lot because he was a smart man who used guile and trickery whenever he could. The ship itself looked like a flying scrap heap on purpose to allow for smuggling and avoiding authorities. It could fight very well when it had to, but that was because it was a unique ship. The equivalent of a ship that had been in possession of the PCs for hundreds of adventures, not right off the showroom floor.
Quote from: jeff37923;736924This touches on something that I hated about the d20 version of Star Wars. Ships that were suppossed to be transports often had better weapons and shields than some warships as standard equipment. A transport should be a transport, not a pocket battleship. How can a repressive dictatorship like the Empire maintain control with all these heavily armed freighters flying around.
I can't say that I found that issue with Star Wars Saga Edition TBH. In the corebook, transports were the worst as presented in any version of a Star Wars RPG including WEG and FFG.
Quote from: jeff37923;736924"What about the Millenium Falcon?"
The MF is a special snowflake in any version of a Star Wars RPG including WEG and FFG :) In fact, Star Wars Saga Edition had very limited modification for Starships compared to the mad stuff that you could do in early D20 versions and WEG. That was one thing I liked about it.
Quote from: jeff37923;736924This touches on something that I hated about the d20 version of Star Wars. Ships that were suppossed to be transports often had better weapons and shields than some warships as standard equipment. A transport should be a transport, not a pocket battleship. How can a repressive dictatorship like the Empire maintain control with all these heavily armed freighters flying around.
That's simply true of Star Wars as a whole. For a repressive dictatorship, they are awfully lenient when it comes to freedom of movement and weapon ownership.
I mean, what was Luke Skywalker flying around in and shooting wamp rats with? You never saw it in the movie, but they had concept art. Basically a fighter jet with a laser cannon
I've played WED/D6 and I've played Saga Edition. I'd play the latter over the former in a heartbeat, even with my usual reservations about D20.
As people have mentioned, it suffers many of the usual problems of high levels and supplement-bloat, but they're fixed with judicious GMing-with-awareness. Skill Focus: Use the Force needs banning at low levels. Climb, Jump and Swim need merging into Athletics (and watch how still no one will bother to train it).
The five base class format is brilliant, though it's perhaps a little too punitive with BAB (fixed with fractional BAB rules). It actually balances Jedi with non-Jedi, without nerfing Force users like WEG did. Nor does it suffer the godlike signature character issues either.
Our problem was that we just aren't steeped enough in D20 to make it intuitive or obvious. It required too much book-referencing in play for our tastes, and even after a half-dozen sessions that didn't seem to improve.
D6's biggest flaw is probably the blaster-proof Wookiee, especially if he's wearing armor. :D
Quote from: JeremyR;736931That's simply true of Star Wars as a whole. For a repressive dictatorship, they are awfully lenient when it comes to freedom of movement and weapon ownership.
I mean, what was Luke Skywalker flying around in and shooting wamp rats with? You never saw it in the movie, but they had concept art. Basically a fighter jet with a laser cannon
I disagree, if you look at the weapons, armor, and vehicles available to citizens of the Empire in WEG d6 Star Wars they are outclassed by what is available to the military (any military). Yet if you look at the same of d20 Star Wars, civilians are on a par with the military and even exceed it in certain cases. Particularly egregious examples of this were the stock Corellian freighters of
Star Wars Gamer issue #2 which had better weapons than the Imperial customs ships or TIE fighters who were the usual opponents.
Luke's T-16 Skyhopper was only armed with stun weapons if you look at the stats.
Quote from: jeff37923;736940Particularly egregious examples of this were the stock Corellian freighters of Star Wars Gamer issue #2 which had better weapons than the Imperial customs ships or TIE fighters who were the usual opponents.
If its in Star Wars Gamer, I assume you are talking about an older D20 edition of Star Wars than Saga Edition.
I really liked the Saga edition It had only two real mechanical flaws a new GM should be aware of.
1) mentioned already the Skill focus Use the force. Simplest fix I have seen is the Skill focus bonus is +1 per 2 levels up to +5. That way still useful for any character and any skill not just trying to balance Use the Force skill.
2) while the condition track is cool the ability to inflict condition "Damage" can get out of hand. You can fairly easily at low level (3rd-5th) knock someone down 3 to 4 levels on the track and cripple them before they can do much. This is solved by me by saying if you exploit, I'll exploit and I have more bad guys. It usually keeps it in check. This is also due to Supplement bloat as well. So monitoring that is a necessity but I think that is true with any system. The more moving parts the more that can go wrong.
Just my thoughts.
Quote from: Skywalker;736943If its in Star Wars Gamer, I assume you are talking about an older D20 edition of Star Wars than Saga Edition.
I think we are all better off if we ignore any possible d20 Star Wars systems.
As far as Saga is concerned, it really scratched my SW itch for a while. We never got into high level play (we never do...) but up to 10, it works very well.
Force Disarm was horribly fucked though. Even with the power and the upgrade, Vader himself needed a natty 20 to disarm Solo.
Good math, kids, buy a freaking calculator.
My impression of Saga was that it made me like the previous d20 Star Wars a lot more than I thought I did.
JG
Ran a few games early on. It was fun but it didn't stick and we moved on to something else. Which was D&D 4e iirc, and that didn't stick either although I managed to subject the bastards to something like 14 weeks worth of Keep on the Shadowfell so at least I got value for my money on that one.
My biggest regret with SAGA is that I have the entire run except for the KOTOR book and at these bullshit prices (http://www.amazon.com/Knights-Republic-Campaign-Guide-Roleplaying/dp/0786949236/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395119805&sr=8-1&keywords=kotor+saga) I'm not likely to complete my collection any time soon. That nags at the OCD a little bit, I won't lie.
Yep. Several Saga books are phenomenally expensive.
On that note, I have a complete set I am considering selling, but I wouldn't split it up due to cherry picking. Shipping from New Zealand is high, but not so high when you factor in this prices :)
I've ran two full campaigns of Saga. Here are my experiences -
1) UTF is by the RAW over powered. My solution is to disallow Skill Focus - UTF until a PC reaches character level 6, rationalizing it as the later stages of Padawan training.
2) Force Wizards are broken, especially at very high levels, especially with the huge damage that Move Object can do. One way I have of toning it down is to have the roll you have to beat equal to the entire Fortitude Defense+base TN for object mass.
3) Force Choke is also broken due to it's actional denial aspect. As a house rule I generally only allow two instances of a particular Force Power in a Force User's suite.
4) Because falling damage is so severe in Saga, Force powers used to push, pull and move things can be very powerful in dangerous environments, such as cliffs, canyons and so on. Take this into account with your PC Jedi.
One thing that I did find to my liking is that non-Force User PCs are competitive with Force Users, far more so in Saga than in D6. This allowed more diversity, instead of PCs picking to be Force Sensitive and then running straight for some other PC with Force Skills as was done in D6.
Also, understand that Saga was designed to support Han Solo at Star's End play up to The Force Unleashed. You need to as a GM state your assumptions and style at character generation and put in place house rules for your particular Star Wars style. For example, I usually don't allow the Starship Manuevers from Starships of the Galaxy, as I usually don't run a lot of starship combats. However, those rules would be great for a Rogue Squadron game.
Overall I get the impression there's a lot of "fixing the rules" going on. The consensus, even among people who like the game, seems to be that at least some fixing is required. I don't find that particularly appealing.
Also, a sneak peek revealed a lot of repeated illustrations throughout the core book. How bad is it?
The books are nice to look at.
There are pros and cons to every Star Wars game. It just depends on what bothers you the most.
Quote from: 3rik;737256Overall I get the impression there's a lot of "fixing the rules" going on. The consensus, even among people who like the game, seems to be that at least some fixing is required. I don't find that particularly appealing.
Also, a sneak peek revealed a lot of repeated illustrations throughout the core book. How bad is it?
Not very. Even EotE has some old art. Mainly in the gear.
Well. It is not a card game like Marvel and Dragonlance SAGA right?
Quote from: Omega;737280Well. It is not a card game like Marvel and Dragonlance SAGA right?
Nope. Different use of "Saga".
Quote from: 3rik;737256Overall I get the impression there's a lot of "fixing the rules" going on. The consensus, even among people who like the game, seems to be that at least some fixing is required. I don't find that particularly appealing.
Not really. There's one main issue with Use the Force Skill Focus and that's a very easy fix and a general caution about high level play. You would get the same kind of responses with WEG Star Wars with use static defences or some such, and most likely most other RPG.
In terms of art, I think some of the chapter art is used in the chapter opening collage art, which provides a preview of what the chapter is about. I quite like it. In fact, the form factor being almost exactly cinema screen size and a number of other simple physical tricks like this one are for good effect IMO
Quote from: 3rik;737256Overall I get the impression there's a lot of "fixing the rules" going on. The consensus, even among people who like the game, seems to be that at least some fixing is required. I don't find that particularly appealing.
Also, a sneak peek revealed a lot of repeated illustrations throughout the core book. How bad is it?
Keep in mind some of the fixes were a YMMV sort of thing. And even these are mostly easy and very few.
A recurring trend with the SW RPGs has been that at least one force power/skill/whatever was just a little, or alot, overtorqued. I remember something about Force Lightning in the WEG version, and not sure what version had the woefully incompetent Stormtroopers.
But to their credit the WEG and SAGA versions seem to have the least issues.
Quote from: 3rik;737256Overall I get the impression there's a lot of "fixing the rules" going on. The consensus, even among people who like the game, seems to be that at least some fixing is required. I don't find that particularly appealing.
I have never in my 20-odd years of playing RPGs encountered a single system that was not in need of at least some "fixing". RPGs are written by fallible human beings who inevitably have differing tastes and preferences to the people playing them. Thus there will always be things that need to be changed.
I always just switched skill focus to:
+2, +3 at 3rd level, +4 at 6th level, +5 at 9th level.
In Saga Edition and it worked out fine. Didn't change when people could take it, just made it less "superpowered" at first level.
(Without house rules, Human Jedi who takes Skill Focus (Use the Force) and Force Training at level 1 can really tear things up).
Quote from: Kiero;737339I have never in my 20-odd years of playing RPGs encountered a single system that was not in need of at least some "fixing". RPGs are written by fallible human beings who inevitably have differing tastes and preferences to the people playing them. Thus there will always be things that need to be changed.
I know that, but suggested fixes for Star Wars Saga seem particularly prevalent when ever the game is discussed.
Quote from: 3rik;737391I know that, but suggested fixes for Star Wars Saga seem particularly prevalent when ever the game is discussed.
That is not my experience. Even your recent WEG thread has seen house rules being raised already. And it won't be long until someone suggests Mini-6 (for good reason) :)
Quote from: JeremyR;736931That's simply true of Star Wars as a whole. For a repressive dictatorship, they are awfully lenient when it comes to freedom of movement and weapon ownership.
Only out in the Outer Rim, which is
supposed to be like the Wild West.
QuoteI mean, what was Luke Skywalker flying around in and shooting wamp rats with? You never saw it in the movie, but they had concept art. Basically a fighter jet with a laser cannon
In Star Wars?
More like a beat-up old pickup, with a gun rack.
Though...it still doesn't make Luke look any less the psychopath; shooting small animals for "fun", and all... :p
Quote from: Novastar;738080Only out in the Outer Rim, which is supposed to be like the Wild West.
In Star Wars?
More like a beat-up old pickup, with a gun rack.
Though...it still doesn't make Luke look any less the psychopath; shooting small animals for "fun", and all... :p
Well, that depends on if you consider "redneck" synonymous with "psychopath". ;)
JG
Quote from: Novastar;738080Though...it still doesn't make Luke look any less the psychopath; shooting small animals for "fun", and all... :p
Quote from: Luke SkywalkerIt's not impossible. I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home, they're not much bigger than two meters.
... Bigger than two meters is small?!
Idk, I always got the impression that 2-3 meter long rats were a fairly dangerous species that had to be kept in check like coyotes out west.
Quote from: Emperor Norton;738106... Bigger than two meters is small?!
Idk, I always got the impression that 2-3 meter long rats were a fairly dangerous species that had to be kept in check like coyotes out west.
Mebbe there was good eatin' on um.
Quote from: Lynn;738123Mebbe there was good eatin' on um.
Somehow I don't think they taste like chicken.
(http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20060926201600/starwars/images/e/e1/Womprat.jpg)