Why does Star Wars Saga have such a bad rep?

[PhoneLobster]

This is so full of BS that...

It's based on memory form a long time ago. The fact that it is very CLOSE to correct is bad enough. Oh gee a DESTINY point is needed, oh no, the womp rat closet is not even required! So what, close enough, force stunners/chokers/etc still rule your universe.

Like I said before, you want more accurate critique go and read the OLD threads from when I actually had access to the material. The linked one is quite relevant.

There is NOTHING good in Saga, when saga defenders were pressed to back their claim that it was at least a FOUNDATION for some hypothetical better star wars rules... they couldn't ACTUALLY name any mechanics from Saga that they would have actually kept...

You would be better off starting from scratch and writing your own rules set, even if you aren't good at it. That is how bad Saga edition is.

[magnuskn]

Saga isn't exactly a paragon of balance, but this is just bad.

First, you're positing a party of characters who are all Jedi/Sith Masters of 14th level at the lowest (probably higher). The ability to use powers in-system is taken from the movies (Darth Vader choking an officer through a screen, which the rules normally prohibit), so it's hard to charge that against the designers. To project Force abilities across a system requires a specialized Force Secret (an unusual kind of talent) which you probably didn't take at 14th level because you took Quicken Power.

More importantly, projecting a Force power across a system requires you to spend a Destiny point every single time. Destiny points are gained almost entirely through leveling up, giving you a very finite resource to burn through every time you jump into the system, that is better spent getting auto-criticals or negating killing blows on yourself.

Also, the womp rat part shows a misunderstanding of how powers are recharged. You don't have to fight something to get Force powers back, you just spend a minute meditating (or whatever, the book doesn't go into much detail) and you get your powers back, regardless of whether or not you fought anything.

I'll let magnuskn catch anything I missed.

That was pretty thorough, thanks. I'll add that Force Grip ( which is, indeed, the most OP force power, because it reduces enemies to a single swift action on their turn ) has been nerfed to only work within 12 squares and within line of sight. So no more choking officers through a visual connection over thousands of kilometers. So, yep, one destiny point to use Force Grip in the same star system, if you can see your target. You'd think that Vader was pretty pissed off at Ozzel to waste that Destiny Point on him.

The Scoundrel class is good for nothing (except possibly the Knack talent); you might as well take Noble and walk away with 2 extra skills (which amount to feats), and if you want to be an underworld type, just take the Connections talent.

I suppose you are thinking about Fool's Luck, which is an amazing talent. The Slicer tree also is immensely helpful with Use Computer, which can be the most important skill in the game, depending on the type of adventure you are playing. Free Point Blank Shot is also very helpful.

The knowledge skills, other than Galactic Lore, are nigh worthless.

Knowledge Bureacracy is very helpful for a lot of things.

)You add your whole level to Defense. The majority of characters will add their whole level to attacks. And yet, skills only get half your level. You start the game with skills being 5 or more higher than any other bonus, and end with them lagging behind, because the designers refused to use the levels system consistently.

That is actually by design. It's so that, for example, we have scenes like the Dooku - Yoda duel, where Dooku said "It is obvious that this contest cannot be decided by our knowledge of the Force" and we get a cool lightsaber duel ( YMMV on Yoda leapfrogging around like crazy ).

The level range was poorly thought out. Even Jedi Padawans are listed as being 5th level on average, but the game becomes too complex to manage past about 10th level, given that you get at least one feat or talent every level. By 10th level, you are toting around 14 of them. But, 10th is only half way up; at level 20 a character will have 27 feats and talents. Note that if you're playing a Jedi, you also get force powers and force secrets.

That sounds like pure theorycrafting on your side. Nobody of the players I played with had any trouble managing their thirteenth level characters. Compared to a D&D or Pathfinder character, SAGA characters are actually quite manageable.

Combat takes much longer than it needs to. The average attack will result in 4 dice of damage, and this number must then be compared to the targets Damage Threshold to see if the Condition Track (which is separate from HP) goes down.

That is viewed by fans as a feature, not a bug.

In order to compensate for the handful of dice that are rolled for damage, characters start with huge piles of HP (Jedi and Soldiers start with 30+their Constitution modifier). The "Second Wind" mechanic allows you to, if you have have fewer than half your maximum HP left (?) spend a turn to regain some. This seems to exist only to prolong fights.

Yeah, since blasters do between 3d6 to 3d10 of damage, starting with high hit points is kinda necessary. Second Wind is there so that people can hold out longer, correct, but also so that they can do more than one encounter. Healing is not as easy to get, unless you allow two force-users using Vital Transfer between themselves and the party all the time. Which also costs time, so on, say, a chase scene it is pretty difficult to heal up between encounters.

In order to benefit from wearing armor, you will be required to take 2 different talents which are available only to Soldiers. Note that this isn't Vacc Suit Operation (à la Traveller); the game requires you to take Talents too make armor protect you. While it is true that low level characters can get away without the talents, mid to high level characters all but require armor, if only for the vacc sealing and other enhancements. I take issue with ever having to take a talent, which, to add insult to injury, is entirely distinct from Armor Proficiencies.

True on the mechanical aspect, which is ridiculously stupid. Technically, the best way to make a character entirely defenseless is to put some armored flightvest on him ( in case he doesn't have at least the first armor talent ). On the lore aspect, the majority of characters in Star Wars don't use armor.

It's based on memory form a long time ago. The fact that it is very CLOSE to correct is bad enough. Oh gee a DESTINY point is needed, oh no, the womp rat closet is not even required! So what, close enough, force stunners/chokers/etc still rule your universe.

Like I said before, you want more accurate critique go and read the OLD threads from when I actually had access to the material. The linked one is quite relevant.

There is NOTHING good in Saga, when saga defenders were pressed to back their claim that it was at least a FOUNDATION for some hypothetical better star wars rules... they couldn't ACTUALLY name any mechanics from Saga that they would have actually kept...

You would be better off starting from scratch and writing your own rules set, even if you aren't good at it. That is how bad Saga edition is.

Whatever floats your boat, dude. I doubt you ever played a session of the game, but only stared at the rules and decided that it sucks. It definitely has its flaws, though. Which need extensive houseruling. But there is a difference between "needs some improvements to be playable well" and "totally and utterly sucks".

[Hieronymous Rex]

I suppose you are thinking about Fool's Luck, which is an amazing talent. The Slicer tree also is immensely helpful with Use Computer, which can be the most important skill in the game, depending on the type of adventure you are playing. Free Point Blank Shot is also very helpful.

True, Master Slicer is very good, since Improving Attitude for computer is the primary thing you do with Use Computer (although you do have to set a talent on fire to get it).

Knowledge Bureacracy is very helpful for a lot of things.

It is decent, I suppose. My group actually got some good use out of it while running the government of a planet. Noble is a very good support class, and they tend to have every knowledge skill just for kicks.

That is actually by design. It's so that, for example, we have scenes like the Dooku - Yoda duel, where Dooku said "It is obvious that this contest cannot be decided by our knowledge of the Force" and we get a cool lightsaber duel ( YMMV on Yoda leapfrogging around like crazy ).

What... does that have to do with anything? The system causes Use The Force to be way ahead of attacks at early levels, then because the games math does scale properly everyone rushes to get the Education destiny to stay on par.

That sounds like pure theorycrafting on your side. Nobody of the players I played with had any trouble managing their thirteenth level characters. Compared to a D&D or Pathfinder character, SAGA characters are actually quite manageable.

The games I have played have never gone past 12th level for this very reason: we were just getting more and more feats & talents that we didn't care about. Take into account that your enemies are also getting these feats; the GM needs to memorize the benefit of all of them or the game is slowed down.

[The Condition Track] is viewed by fans as a feature, not a bug.

What fans care about doesn't matter. The Condition Track, because it is divorced from the other mechanic that represents the same thing, it is a chore to book keep (since I have to mark off HP and check for track drop every time I take damage), and is a balance issue: setting your weapon to stun is actually better than kill in most situations because, in tandem with certain feats and talents, you can drop someone into unconsciousness virtually without fail in 2 rounds.

Yeah, since blasters do between 3d6 to 3d10 of damage, starting with high hit points is kinda necessary. Second Wind is there so that people can hold out longer, correct, but also so that they can do more than one encounter. Healing is not as easy to get, unless you allow two force-users using Vital Transfer between themselves and the party all the time. Which also costs time, so on, say, a chase scene it is pretty difficult to heal up between encounters.

They dealt with the problem on the wrong end: they should have reduced blaster damage instead of inflating HP.

I can't find any indication in the GM section of the Core book that their should be more than one encounter in a day. In my play time, I rarely had any; usually Second Winds were taken during large battles.

[Slade]

What fans care about doesn't matter. The Condition Track, because it is divorced from the other mechanic that represents the same thing, it is a chore to book keep (since I have to mark off HP and check for track drop every time I take damage), and is a balance issue: setting your weapon to stun is actually better than kill in most situations because, in tandem with certain feats and talents, you can drop someone into unconsciousness virtually without fail in 2 rounds.

Can you explain how that it makes it possible drop someone with stun weapons in 2 rounds. Don't you deal 1/2 damage with stun weapons?

[Hieronymous Rex]

Can you explain how that it makes it possible drop someone with stun weapons in 2 rounds. Don't you deal 1/2 damage with stun weapons?

When setting to stun, you deal half damage to HP, but full damage for the purpose of the Condition Track, and if that damage would drop the target a step, they drop 2 step instead. Also, stun (or ion, when dealing with droids) grenades allow you to extend the effect to a group of people).

There are a mass of feats and talents that can help you here. Just a sampling:

Core Talents:
Inspire Zeal: Whenever an ally CT drops someone, the target goes down and additional step.

Dastardly Strike: Your attacks cause -1 CT against targets that are denied their Dex bonus to defense.

Stunning Strike: Melee attacks cause -1 CT.

Hunter's Mark: -1 CT when you aim. This is from the Bounty Hunter PrC.

Debilitating Shot: -1 CT when aiming with a ranged weapon. This is from the Gunslinger PrC.

Non-Core Talents:

Progenitor's Call: 1/per encounter make a Use the Force check versus Will for -1 CT and they lose their next standard action.

Set for Stun: Spend two swift actions to cause target to go down –3 on the condition track with stun weapon.



A properly set up team can effectively kill anyone they like every round. For example, consider a 4 man team. The Noble has Inspire Zeal. Any single other member can drop someone 3-4 steps when they hit, so combined the party need merely decide who they want dead, and ignore the whole messy business of HP.

Why is this bad design? The movies, games, etc. are not noted for people constantly stunning each other. Also, while this could have been balanced from a game standpoint (since enemies could use the same tactics), the statblocks for NPC and creatures are not set up to counter the PCs.

[Korwin]

Stun weapons still need to beat the damage threshold.
(luckely our group isnt into group optimation, and nobody built an condition dropper by themself)

[Fuchs]

Don't stun weapons have shitty range, like 4 meters?

[magnuskn]

What... does that have to do with anything? The system causes Use The Force to be way ahead of attacks at early levels, then because the games math does scale properly everyone rushes to get the Education destiny to stay on par.

You cannot rush the Education destiny, because it is absolutely up to your GM to ever give it to you or then even fulfill it.

The thing about skill starting out very good and then slowing off later was confirmed by one of the lead designers on the official site ( back when they still had it, sigh ), for the exact reason I cited.

The games I have played have never gone past 12th level for this very reason: we were just getting more and more feats & talents that we didn't care about. Take into account that your enemies are also getting these feats; the GM needs to memorize the benefit of all of them or the game is slowed down.

As I said, my group never did, so I guess it's one experience against another.

What fans care about doesn't matter. The Condition Track, because it is divorced from the other mechanic that represents the same thing, it is a chore to book keep (since I have to mark off HP and check for track drop every time I take damage), and is a balance issue: setting your weapon to stun is actually better than kill in most situations because, in tandem with certain feats and talents, you can drop someone into unconsciousness virtually without fail in 2 rounds.

True, stun builds are too good, if the GM doesn't have common sense. In normal cases, the condition track is easy to keep track of, though.

They dealt with the problem on the wrong end: they should have reduced blaster damage instead of inflating HP.

I can't find any indication in the GM section of the Core book that their should be more than one encounter in a day. In my play time, I rarely had any; usually Second Winds were taken during large battles.

Well, I'll refrain my saying "Your GM did it wrong", because GM'ing is a highly individualized thing. What works for one doesn't work for another. But at least in my group having only one encounter per day was illusory. Normally we had around 5-6. We had houseruled healing, however, where First Aid could be applied once after every combat. The characters still were pretty beat up, because First Aid couldn't keep up with the inflicted damage.

Don't stun weapons have shitty range, like 4 meters?

Six meters.

[Roy]

What fans care about doesn't matter.

I see what you did there.

In this topic, a Paizil attempts to justify terrible rules by shunting all the blame onto the DM, ignoring that in any other profession, such would lead to your immediate dismissal from your job position. At best.

Anyways, aside from all the obvious rules flaws, the problem with Saga is they spend way too much time wanking off to the canon characters, and basically tell you they're the real characters, and whoever you're making will never amount to anything. It's like the Forgettable Realms, except not D&D, and they're a lot more blatant about it.

[Xur]

Thanks for all the insight on SWSE guys, I never looked into it and only knew it from statements like "If I were to change D&D 3rd edition, I would take xxx from SWSE because that was awesome." (xxx would be the skill system or the force mechanic as magic replacement)

[Username17]

Thanks for all the insight on SWSE guys, I never looked into it and only knew it from statements like "If I were to change D&D 3rd edition, I would take xxx from SWSE because that was awesome." (xxx would be the skill system or the force mechanic as magic replacement)

A fair number of people think the skill mechanic is awesome. Rather more honest people claim that the skill mechanic could have been awesome. It's a tag system, where you have skills at only a couple of levels (untrained, trained, and Focused), and other than that you just go by stat bonuses and level. You know, the core idea of the 4e skill system.

And yeah, you could have gone somewhere good with that. They don't produce enough skills for the system to be interesting, don't produce a balanced enough skill list to be acceptable, and have the differences in skill training levels be so big that they basically eclipse the purpose of rolling dice at all. But as something written on a cocktail napkin about how to replace skill ranks, I would definitely say "Tell me more!"

-Username17

[Psychic Robot]

Frank's right. SWSE is basically a rough draft of a decent system.

[Roy]

Well, the concept of fusing similar skills together is good, and was blatantly stolen by me well before it was blatantly stolen by say, Pathfailure. But everything else about it is terribad.

[Psychic Robot]

I'm not sure you can steal that kind of idea. I'm almost certain people (such as myself) have been griping about Spot/Listen and Hide/Move Silently from day one of 3e.

[Hieronymous Rex]

...A fair number of people think the skill mechanic is awesome...

I don't think that the skill system was conceptually wrong; my main gripe is the puzzling difference between the way attacks, defenses, and skills are calculated.

I think (please check my math), changing skill training from "granting +5" to "removing the -5 untrained penalty" would help. Then, the designers need to make up their minds on whether to base thing on your level or half you level.

Another problem is that the designers didn't know how broad they wanted skills to be, so we get "Mechanics" (which covers everything from starship repair to lockpicking), and "Jump" on the same list (note that Jump is distinct from Acrobatics).

The Endurance skill is an abomination in the sight of the Lord. Fun fact: one listed use of the Endurance skill is holding your breath. An example use of an ability check for Constitution is holding your breath.

You cannot rush the Education destiny, because it is absolutely up to your GM to ever give it to you or then even fulfill it.

What I meant was that in order to not drop off in power as you level up a force user needs to get Education, so they try for it. Whether or not they actually get it is... well, is your GM a bad person?

True, stun builds are too good, if the GM doesn't have common sense.

Hold it right there; you can't just agree with someone then throw in a "fuck you" without explanation.

In normal cases, the condition track is easy to keep track of, though.

The condition track is easy to use; my problem with it is that it is redundant with the HP system. The game should have picked one and stuck with it.

[magnuskn]

What I meant was that in order to not drop off in power as you level up a force user needs to get Education, so they try for it. Whether or not they actually get it is... well, is your GM a bad person?

Not necessarily. But as a GM and player, I recognize that to keep game balance one needs to weigh if giving a player something doesn't result in an unbalanced game, which in the end ends up being no fun for everybody but the guy who can feel more powerful than his fellow players.

Hold it right there; you can't just agree with someone then throw in a "fuck you" without explanation.

In my opinion, it should be the duty of the GM to talk to the player in question and discuss with him if his chosen advancement path ( which is only achievable with a very specific build which to me seems not a very organic character progression ) doesn't unbalance the campaign. As it is very easy to see that a completely stun-focused character is one of the loopholes of the system, an experienced GM should recognize that early and do something against one powerplaying imploding the campaign.

The condition track is easy to use; my problem with it is that it is redundant with the HP system. The game should have picked one and stuck with it.

It is one of the ways to catch opponents alive and does pretty well in simulating exhaustion or disease damage. Was it strictly necessary? No. But is it a bad design? Not in my opinion.