Star Wars: Saga Edition

[RandomCasualty]

1183504739[/unixtime]]So you are suggesting that in order to make character creation/progression rules fun for players they should be SO complex they can keep the players busy for the entire period in between sessions.

Well, here's the thing. PCs who enjoy character building generally want a complex creation system.

I don't agree with this, I prefer my systems simple and easy, but some people enjoy dumpster diving through lots of books, the same way that Magic: the gGthering players enjoy dumpster diving through lots of card sets, looking for good combos and so on.

You can generally view character creation as a mini-game where you're sifting through a bunch of crap MtG style. Or you can have a simple system where you're more worried about getting to play the character instead of building him. I'd much rather have the latter, but when people say "creating characters is fun" they're generally referring to the former.

[Draco_Argentum]

1183473287[/unixtime]]
[*]Shockwave/Decompression[/b] (got something better?)

How about calling it concussion? Or blast?

[PhoneLobster]

but when people say "creating characters is fun" they're generally referring to the former.

What so you're suggesting that the idea of fun character creation is somehow exclusive to a counterproductive methodology enjoyed by a very distinct minority of players.

Seriously I've met a lot of role players and very very few waste anything close to that sort of time on character creation, many don't think you should, most don't even realise you can.

No, role master style character creation is only fun to role master fans, they exist, somehow, the same as there are people out there that enjoy taxes and accounting.

But they are in enough of a minority that I for one just assumed that suggesting character creation should be fun, as a rebuttal to a claim that tediously collecting piles of +1 to X options was perfectly acceptable and cool, might just be taken to suggest that TEDIOUS character creation is NOT fun. And that the alternative to tediously complex and unrewarding character creation (alla star wars sagas) might just be you know, exciting, simple and rewarding character creation.

I didn't think anyone at all would mistake it for a suggestion that we all just bring back fricking Role Master.

But live and learn.

[RandomCasualty]

Not sure why you keep bringing up rolemaster, I'm just talking about D&D how ti is now.

When you go to create a character you can't just say "I'm a fighter" and plop down 15 fighter levels on your sheet and expect to be good.

No, you've got to dumpster dive through lots of books finding the right combo of feats, PrCs and magic items to add to your character. It really is like putting a deck together for magic the gathering.

Now, some people, like most of the Char Op boards, actually like that and think it's fun. Others don't.

I'm not saying it's a good thing for RPGs, I'm just saying that some people like complex character creation.

[Catharz]

Haven't we been over this already?

[TarlSS]

I just played a game of SAGA yesterday, and it ran quite well. Balance issues didn't really crop up of course, they're really more of a long term thing.

The game itself simply flows much faster. There are less extraneous rolls, and characters are actually encouraged to MOVE and use COVER. Lack of AOOs seems to speed up the game even more.

In the blind face of things, Jedi don't seem to be overpowered. Force Lightning and what not aren't so bad to contend with when it's simple enough to driver a speeder truck and hit you in the face. Any 1st level commoner can do this.

The fact that most combats occur over a distance seems to negate a Jedi's dominance, as well as the fact that there aren't as many 'single target' encounters. The lack of AOOs also reduces the strength of melee combat greatly. You can kill lots of people with a blast of Sith lightning, but doing it multiple times per combat will cost you.
Ostensibly, a Jedi only has his about Level/2 'Manuvers' to use each combat, and they are very quickly expended.

A character of any level can easily match that with explosives, a vehicle, or some other mechanical contrivance. A noble or persuasion oriented scoundrel can attack a target's Will just as effectively as a Jedi, in different way.

A Light repeating blaster might do half damage on a reflex miss, but you can fire TWICE (Using Double attack) and get full damage instead, without even hitting anything.

"Magic" as it were, is not so bad to contend with, when there are technological versions of what it can do everyone has ready access to. (Sensors, Shields, Artillery, Vehicles) A Jedi's power seems to overlap with technology more often than it does stack.

DR doesn't even come into play, really. So the effectiveness of a lightsaber is not so great.

There are certainly problems with the system, but it seems like you actually need to make an effort to have them crop up in the normal course of play.

[Captain_Bleach]

You think the armor as DR instead of AC is a usable transport directly to D&D?

-Crissa

I don't. DR means little when the monster is dishing out insane amounts of damage and hits frequently. Against a Hill Giant Barbarian, I would much prefer +8 AC over DR 8/-.

[Crissa]

Does SAGA hand out DR equal to AC? That'd be silly.

-Crissa

[PhoneLobster]

In my skim, a whole month or something ago now, I didn't notice much DR, I thought the armour would provide some but a quick glance failed to uncover it. There were a few talents floating around that could provide one or two points of DR.

The real DR goes to jedi however, I think there was some power that gave them some sort of DR and there is a talent, in some jedi prestige class, that let them blow an action point for DR 10 to 15/- or something like that, for a whole combat. Throw in deflection and energy absorbtion hit cancelling abilities and you can make some pretty hefty AC (well, not AC, but you know) independent defence dudes out of that. And you are still a jedi when you are done not taking damage.

[RandomCasualty]

Having finally got a chance to read through SAGA a bit I can offer a few of my observations. I'm gong to mostly limit myself to overall system analysis rather than talking about individual class balance:

Pros
-Reflex, fort and will are now on a mostly non-divergent system.
-Breaking objects is much harder, so it's virtually impossible to tunnel through walls. Objects at 0 hp are simply "disabled" to destroy them you must beat their damage threshold (generally about 20-40) with one attack.
-Falling object rules were made more sane.
-TWF is actually fairly decent at higher levels. You get your full strength modifier to each weapon attack, and your penalty is less than someone using double attack. Only problem is that it costs you an extra feat.
-Flat footed makes a bit more sense now in that dex doesn't apply to reflex at all. It never made any sense to me in D&D how getting surprised would hurt your ability to dodge a dagger, but not a fireball.


Shows potential but not quite there.
-The skill system is almost good. The main problem is that they should have had untrained be a -5 penalty instead of a +5 bonus, to put it on roughly the same RNG as fort/ref/will. Also you should add your whole level not just half. This skill system could work assuming they toss the idea of a bunch of other bonuses and stuff. The idea of having untrained, normal and expert (skill focus) characters is a good one.
-The damage track, which is a way to handle wound penalties is a decent base idea, only it doesn't do much at all until you're around level 12. Anything that is going to exceed your damage threshold takes you down at low levels and wounds you to the point of being near death at mid levels. So most characters won't ever see -3 condition track until they're very high in level.
-Replacing AC with reflex defense is almost there. The problem is that there's a contrived system to use natural armor inplace of actual reflex defense advancement for monsters. And this leads to a huge amount of confusion since we're not sure anymore if reflex is dodging out of the way or not taking damage.


Cons
-BaB is still as divergent as ever if you're a nonfighter class.
-Hit points and damage rolls remain, so the system still doesn't handle modern/futuristic weapons well. Meaning it's still not a good system to run Star Wars with.
-Concealment was totally nerfed. It's now only a -2 for normal concealment and a -5 for total. No miss chance at all.
-You can't grapple without a feat. wtf?!
-melee gets hosed. Withdrawing is a move action now, so you can continue to withdraw + fire and there isn't' anything the melee guy can do to you.
-Full actions now take standard + move + swift, which really limits what fighters can do, since they now get no swift while full attacking.
-You can now convert a move or standard action into a swift action. This is potentially problematic when you try to introduce immediate actions into these rules.

Miscellaneous points
-I'm not sure why people seem to think AoOs are gone. They're there, right on page 156. As far as I can tell, they work the same.

Summary
Really, this game isn't too bad and it's a nice evolution for D20, probably what 3.5 should have been for D&D. It still has some definite bugs to get worked out, but I think it's a step in the right direction... in some aspects anyway.

My suggested Improvement
I really think that the game could benefit from a better wound system.

Something like. Attack roll versus reflex defense.
"new damage roll" versus fort defense. This is where armor factors in as a bonus to fort defense.
Degree of success determines how badly injured the target is. There should be three basic states, normal, wounded and disabled. wounded characters take some wound penalties.

Hit points exist to negate successful damage. How many hit points you lose is determined not by the power of the weapon attacking you, but by the level of the attacker.

Thus whenever you're hit the DM may say something like "You can either become wounded or pay 12 hp to negate the attack."

This would allow you to have high powered future weapons without them becoming too deadly. Weapons can also get various bonuses to rolls at different stages. Accurate weapons grant a bonus to the attack roll, powerful weapons grant a bonus to the damage roll, and attacks that are particularly difficult to evade, would cost more hp to avert.

This could even become part of a unified attack system, handling mental attacks (like mind control, dominate, etc.) and so forth. By controlling the three steps to the attack (accuracy, damage, aversion difficulty) you can create a variety of attacks that do different things.

[PhoneLobster]

Something like. Attack roll versus reflex defense.
"new damage roll" versus fort defense.

I once had something a lot like that in a home brew I put together.

Unfortunately the damage roll/fort defense side of the equation ended up being worth measurably more than the attack side. I don't have the numbers I ran on it anymore, however...

I suspect its because if you allow both to contribute equally to the attack AND then measure the degree of success via only one of them the one that determines degree of success contributes more to, well, average degree of success.

To balance that you need to treat damage on a different scale to attack since you realize increasing or decreasing it has a different value to doing the same to attack. Which, at least in principle is what HP does.

If you want a system with two rolls made on basically the same scale you either need to have no margin of success issues on either roll or you need to do what I think Frank suggested on one of his four stat threads or something and have the same contribution to margin of success from both rolls.

Otherwise the wildly innaccurate guy with the rocket laucher is way more deadly than the insanely accurate guy with the pinpoint laser needler.

Also I'm not entirely clear on how your small list of not too notable pros adds up with everything else to a rating of a "nice evolution for d20"?

[Manxome]

1185403622[/unixtime]]If you want a system with two rolls made on basically the same scale you either need to have no margin of success issues on either roll or you need to do what I think Frank suggested on one of his four stat threads or something and have the same contribution to margin of success from both rolls.

Actually, Frank's SAME engine adds half the margin of success on the first roll to the second roll. This means that boosting accuracy doesn't increase your damage on a hit as much as boosting damage, but this is balanced against the fact that boosting accuracy also has a greater impact on the probability of successfully hitting in the first place (both the to-hit and soak rolls in SAME are capable of nullifying an attack, but an accuracy bonus ends up affecting both, while a damage bonus only affects the soak roll). If we wildly generalize from the example cases Frank discussed in this thread, it looks like this results in accuracy and damage having roughly equal value in general, which is pretty darn impressive.

The Perilous system I'm working on (see this thread) handles this issue with attacks that essentially deal two kinds of damage (wounds and peril), and the margin of success on the accuracy ("finesse") roll determines one while the margin of success on the damage roll determines the other.

[RandomCasualty]

1185403622[/unixtime]]
Also I'm not entirely clear on how your small list of not too notable pros adds up with everything else to a rating of a "nice evolution for d20"?

Mainly because the things they changed for the better are some core concepts.

Just getting away from varied skill ranks and divergent saving throw bonuses is a BIG step in the right direction. I kind of wish they'd have done the same with BaB, but that's probably the next step at some point. Anyway, it's good to see that they're altering the base mechanics some, and aren't afraid to modify the system like they were with 3.5

The little stuff isn't that big a deal. I'm more interested in the underlying concepts, which definitely show some degree of evolution, though still in a primitive form, much like 3.0's original incarnation of the d20 system. By the time Saga rolls around to D&D rules hopefully they'll have got most of the bugs out.

The only major thing missing is the fix for the damage/hit point system. And arguably that may not even have to be done if there was a Saga D&D, because the hp system works marginally okay in D&D. It just sucks balls in any modern or futuristic setting.

[PhoneLobster]

Just getting away from varied skill ranks and divergent saving throw bonuses is a BIG step in the right direction. I kind of wish they'd have done the same with BaB, but that's probably the next step at some point. Anyway, it's good to see that they're altering the base mechanics some, and aren't afraid to modify the system like they were with 3.5

But I'm not too clear on why you are saying they got away from varied skill ranks.

After all characters are still walking in at level 1 with something crazy like +15, trained, with a reroll against characters who are walking in with a negative bonus, untrained, and no reroll. And that margin may well stay the same forever (or gain another reroll, and several more points of bonus from attributes and wierd talents on the wrong side).

And that in turn is somewhat divergent from the 15 or under defense bonuses those skills may well find themselves up against, or opposed skills that may well be negative modifiers.

You still have a situation where someone who doesn't take perception and high wisdom just automatically never sees anyone serious about hiding, where someone serious about Jedi Mind trick never fails to mess up your brain, etc...

Its still falling off the RNG all over the place with some added wierd ass long term dynamics with defense vs skill character level based contributions being out of pace with each other that I think are far from being a clear improvement to power variation over character careers, indeed its not even clear if those dynamics are intended or understood by the designers at all.

And it still requires heavy investment character resources, infact being first level class selection and feats instead of ranks the investment to become good at skills may well be worse for generalists/defence and better for specialists/offense than the rank system.

How the heck is there ANY actual "fundamental" advancement there?

Its just that your saying they are fixing it and I'm just not seeing any obvious progress there.

[RandomCasualty]

1185421878[/unixtime]]
But I'm not too clear on why you are saying they got away from varied skill ranks.

After all characters are still walking in at level 1 with something crazy like +15, trained, with a reroll against characters who are walking in with a negative bonus, untrained, and no reroll. And that margin may well stay the same forever (or gain another reroll, and several more points of bonus from attributes and wierd talents on the wrong side).

Well, yes, but a +15 difference is about as big as it's going to get (assuming they don't fuck it up), and you can build a character around it. I mean a stealth specialist should have about a +15 edge over a guy who has no wisdom, and no perception skill, so that makes sense. So modifiers can now help balance that out further.

In D&D the gap continues to widen every level, because untrained characters aren't improving at all and trained characters are.

Now, while the actual numbers (+5 for trained, +5 for skill focus), may not be quite right, the basic concept is no longer divergent (except with regards to unequally increasing ability scores), so it's definitely a step in the right direction.

Remember, I'm not really addressing the individual numbers here. I'm just talking about the overall system concepts. Using Saga as a baseline we can reign in skill modifiers to be whatever we want, by modifying the bonus granted by being trained and for skill focus, for instance. Now, I'm not sure overall how much we want focused characters to dominate unfocused ones, but at the very least, we are sure that a -10 modifier is going to mean something. In D&D, we just aren't sure, because you can have a +40 hide versus a +2 spot, and the hiding guy can take a -20 and not even care.

I suppose what I really should have said is that I like a lot of the concepts in Saga, but not necessarily the implementation.

[PhoneLobster]

I suppose what I really should have said is that I like a lot of the concepts in Saga, but not necessarily the implementation.

That I see, I mean hey at least they THINK they are reigning in skill issues.

But the thing is they aren't, that +15 bonus is just a first level bonus, not the worst possible difference, or even likely difference between a specialist and untrained character.

I vaguely recall saga has something like double the normal attribute boosts as d20, a specialist could be easily throwing an additional +4 to that difference not counting wierd little talent +1's stacking up here and there as well.

Having a negative stat mod of -1 on an opposing skill and life gets harder.

And though rerolls have the benefit of not knocking you clean of an RNG they still work out to something SIMILAR to a pretty large additional bonus.

But the thing which REALLY ticks me off is the use of skill checks against defence scores in place of attack rolls. These things are very very clearly not on the same scales or progressions and comparing them really does blow you off the RNG and does so fast and far.

If they really alternately gave a damn about divergence or actually understood it then why the heck did offensive Force checks ever end up the way they are?

[RandomCasualty]

1185425274[/unixtime]]
But the thing is they aren't, that +15 bonus is just a first level bonus, not the worst possible difference, or even likely difference between a specialist and untrained character.

I vaguely recall saga has something like double the normal attribute boosts as d20, a specialist could be easily throwing an additional +4 to that difference not counting wierd little talent +1's stacking up here and there as well.

Yeah, having little pokemon "collect em all" bonuses hidden in talents is something they need to avoid and will end up screwing up the new system.

Ability scores are the only other divergent part of the system, but hopefully we can find a decent way to limit them, and at worst it may be a 4 point divergence as characters gain levels.

But the thing which REALLY ticks me off is the use of skill checks against defence scores in place of attack rolls. These things are very very clearly not on the same scales or progressions and comparing them really does blow you off the RNG and does so fast and far.

Well, if they did skills right, they could match them up against a defense.

The thing is that they need to make being trained into a non-modifier and being untrained equivalent to a nonproficiency penalty. So you've got then a Focused char at +5, a proficient char at +0 and an untrained char at -5.

Then, it almost works out to some degree. The +5 is a bit big for a single feat, but then they're only skill checks so hopefully they don't do anything too powerful.

[Catharz]

There's no limit on Block and Deflect beyond "You must have a lightsaber drawn and ignited, and you must be aware of the attack and not flat footed".

In other words, if you can see someone making a melee attack 3 miles away, you can block it.

[virgil]

The errata should have that part covered, as well as common sense. Or so some people state on this one thread I found discussing that fact.

p. 41 – Block Talent
Add the following sentences before the last sentence of the Block talent:
"You may use the Block talent to negate melee area attacks, such as those made by the Whirlwind Attack feat. If you succeed on the Use the Force check, you take half damage if the attack hits and no damage if the attack misses. You may spend a Force point to use this talent to negate an attack against an adjacent character."

p. 41 – Deflect Talent
Before the last sentence of the first paragraph, add the following sentence: "You may spend a Force Point to use this talent to negate an attack against an adjacent character."
Replace the second paragraph with the following:
"You can use this talent to deflect some of the barrage of shots fired from a ranged weapon set on autofire, or the Force lightning Force power. If you succeed on the Use the Force check, you take half damage if the attack hits and no damage if the attack misses."

[josephbt]

where did u find the errata? my search turned up nothing

edit: so much bout my google skills and, damn, so much errata??

[virgil]

Star Wars Saga: The Errata