Why does Star Wars Saga have such a bad rep?

[Dean]

It's a pretty straightforward question. I've just never asked it. I mean I've been reading the book lately and I seriously don't find anything in the rulebook offensive on any important level. I mean it's basically just low powered DnD start to finish. Jedi's are obviously better than anybody else by a reasonable margin but Mage > Fighter is something I'm used too.

My instinct is to go on saying what I realize is sub-par but I suppose the point I'm making is that I don't get what's -more- than just sub par. What am I missing that should offend me. People talk about it as being this super bad rpg and I'm just not seeing it.

[MGuy]

Based on what I've played (and I haven't played too much of it) The Jedi > everything else thing is pretty damn big and seriously so. They basically have the only useful out of combat powers you can get and their powers can basically make you win the game and do what you wanna do as something else but better.

When running it I had no idea what constituted level appropriate as I don't recall there being clear instructions on constructing an encounter or anything.


Many of the powers have prereqs and that's a big no no especially when a number of the powers don't do anything I care about (+1 to this, +2 to this under these conditions).

Vehicles don't have rules that are interesting in play and there was no guide to building level appropriate encounters for that either.

Off the top of my head that's all I remember.

[CatharzGodfoot]

It represents the setting pretty well.

Anything good available to non-Jedi has probably been nerfed by errata.

[Psychic Robot]

Ask PhoneLobster.

[PhoneLobster]

1) Star Wars Saga edition was made by the geniuses behind D20 Modern. And as such was doomed to horrible horrible design.

2) Star Wars Saga edition was a "trial run" of many of the unpleasant things about D&D 4E, actually it wasn't because they never actually gathered the data from the so called trail and used it productively. But they DID throw that shit out there early. Most notable I think was the general dumbing down, removal of meaningful options and creation of a big book of boring ass +1 talents with a few workable builds and exploits shining massively over the rest due to poor design work.

3) It promised to fix a lot of things, like massive numeric divergences, Jedi being better than everyone else, crafting being a form of self nerfing, the economic system being utterly broken, and Vehicle rules being a mess. It failed, often dramatically, in every one of those fields.

4) It creates so called heroic characters with less raw power and general interest value than the 3E Rogue. That is not acceptable.

Anyway basically it is the twisted and deformed love child of 4E and D20 Modern. Both it's parents are evil and deformed, and it's designers are among the most incompetent in the field (I am STILL waiting for the opportunity to make fun of Saga's direct spiritual successor, e20 BUT IT IS STILL LATE!)

There is a Saga thread somewhere around here where I argue with people about how bad saga is, it comes from an era that I actually had bothered to read that pathetic core rule book and has some highlights of the incredibly poorly concieved rules set.

My favorite by memory is that one prestige class that requires you to effectively pay a level worth of real character abilities to gain the ability to cut peoples arms off... if and only if you kill or knock them out... you know... that ability to mutilate the dead and helpless you had from level 1... that ability that your GM probably actually has to TAKE AWAY from everyone else when you suddenly discover you didn't have it until now because he has been using it as fluffy description for every big finishing hit right up until this point.

THAT is the level of design competence of Saga Edition, characters choosing between a real numeric +1 incremental annoying bonus, the ability to have fluff text on their finishing strikes, or the ability to be basically immune to all blaster bolt fire ever.

Saga edition is crap, the more people who know that the better.

[PhoneLobster]

Hey here is one of those threads.

Star Wars Saga Edition : Foundation Of Nothing Much Actually

[TheFlatline]

Is the Saga Edition all of the D20 shit? Because I have some of the D20 Star Wars RPG books, and god they're bad.

I never checked out the revised books (I wasn't going to be fooled and spend *more* money on them), but I remember that the way the stats worked out, Yoda at 20th level almost could never reflect missed blaster bolts from a storm trooper, but a level 1 character could like 30% of the time.

Combine that with shitty vehicle rules (which is half the goddamn star wars setting) and the "jedi win everything" approach, and it... well... blew chunks.

Stick with the WEG version. Clunky system as all hell, but at least Jedi didn't win automatically.

[Username17]

Is the Saga Edition all of the D20 shit?

No. Just the later version. It's still fucking awful.

SAGA is basically a "work in progress" as released. No one ever made something like encounter guidelines or something that would actually allow you to play the game. Now the work they were progressing towards, turned out to be 4e D&D. And the work they were progressing from was d20 Modern. Once you know that crucial piece of information, the fact that it is clumsy and dull stops being surprising.

Some of the innovations they came up with probably sounded good on paper. Some of them still do. So you have the 4e Defenses instead of the 3e Saving Throws. That's not super important, but it's probably a step in the right direction. It also uses the 4e skill system. So as you might expect, that works out to "Thank you for getting rid of skill ranks, why did you replace it with a pile of feces on my desk?" But they hadn't come up with the 4e power system yet, and they have left in the even more fucked up D20 Modern Talent system. That's the one where every two levels you get a power or a +1 bonus to something you don't care about and won't remember anyway.

-Username17

[Slade]

I never got the notion about Jedi. anyone can be a "jedi" just take Force powers and stuff.

Jedi class only gives a Lightsaber proficiency. It isn't required to be a "Jedi" in theme or useage.

But yeah that Prc was stupid.

[magnuskn]

It's a pretty straightforward question. I've just never asked it. I mean I've been reading the book lately and I seriously don't find anything in the rulebook offensive on any important level. I mean it's basically just low powered DnD start to finish. Jedi's are obviously better than anybody else by a reasonable margin but Mage > Fighter is something I'm used too.

My instinct is to go on saying what I realize is sub-par but I suppose the point I'm making is that I don't get what's -more- than just sub par. What am I missing that should offend me. People talk about it as being this super bad rpg and I'm just not seeing it.

I'd actually rather say on a general level that force users are better than non-force users, not that Jedi are better than everybody else. Force-users in general get by far more options, due to the versatility of force-powers.

A straight Jedi will lack horribly in the skill department. Since skill use comes up far more regularly than in D&D ( due to the lack of super-powerful magic replacing many skill uses ), that is a serious handicap.

The most versatile Jedi is probably one starting with one level of Noble and then going back into Jedi. Since Saga only counts the class you took at the beginning for your number of skills, this by far outweighs the cons of not starting with the main class you'll take later on.

Another thing of note is that multiclassing is very much encouraged by the system, giving one the chance to create your character exactly how you wish him to be.

I do not wish to get into a flamewar, but I had great fun playing the game for most of last year. Also GM'ing it for other people. If I have a major problem with the system per se, it is that skill use as attacks far outstrip defenses until the middle levels. At that point things get progressively more stable. As such, the game is one which gets paradoxically more balanced the higher level the player characters ( and their opponents ) are. Quite a difference from the standard fantasy D20 games.

*edit* Well, since I am still feeling too awake to go to bed right now, I thought I'd add things to my post which I think you only get through actual play experience, instead of just looking at the rules.

1.) Jedi don't win at everything. Yep, they get force powers. So can everybody else who takes the Force Sensitive feat. In fact, playing a Jedi is normally the best way to make sure that you are the party member who hits the floor the most, since GM's tend to focus-fire on you, instead of the people hiding behind crates. Jedi have very little defense against grenades, unless they take one level into Scout and get Evasion. This does actually present a problem because:

2.) You never have enough feats and talents. There are tons over tons of options on how to build your character. Sure, about 50% of them suck, giving you a fiddly special attack which works only under certain circumstances and once per encounter. But the other 50% all look appealing and you never can get them all.

So, taking that one level of Scout means that you will not be able to get that other feat combination until three levels later, which translates to your character not being able to do that special trick or attack sequence you want for several months of real time play. Taking another level into Scout for a much needed bonus feat means delaying a nice talent until you've taken the requisite three to five levels in your chosen prestige class.

SAGA as a system is about making choices which aspect of your character you want to develop and how long you are willing to put off other aspects for that gimmick you got by multiclassing.

3.) Having the ability to deflect blaster fire and block melee attacks costs you two talents. As explained one point above, that means you are therefore neglecting other aspects of your character design. Sure, being able to not being hit by a blaster shot is nice, but every block after the first one gets a cumulative -5 penalty on your Use the Force check. The first hit you will be able to block easily. The second one already has a good chance of bypassing that protection. The third one... good luck with that. And as said before, being the melee guy with the glow-rod means that you'll probably be the focus for much incoming blaster shots.

4.) Skills are really, really important in this game. You can be a total combat monster, but unless you get one or two skill monkeys in the party, a lot of stories will have you standing before a computer terminal or blast door and going "Hurrrrrr?". Luckily skill monkeys don't necessarily need to suck at combat, they just have to use one of the shorter feat chains to contribute quite well. Which gives them the option to get some talents and feats to really pump up their slicing and mechanical capabilities.

5.) That being said, having force powers really ups your versatility too much compared to characters who cannot use the Force. OTOH being force-sensitive obligates you to spread out your attributes even more, so it also has a trade-off. Given that attribute increases are not as easy to come by as in Pathfinder, having only slightly good attributes everywhere really does affect your character a lot over his career.

6.) A complaint from a post above was that the game makes your characters less powerful than their fantasy counterparts in D&D and Pathfinder. Yeah, that is kinda the point. Star Wars is not high magic fantasy, but instead low magic space fantasy. Sure, the Jedi have magical powers, but the majority of those are equivalent to the low-level magic of what a fantasy mage is capable of. The characters are still recognizably human ( or Ithorian, Duros, Bothan, etc.) at even the highest levels.

Personally, I count that as an advantage of the system, not as a point to criticise it.

[ubernoob]

//

[Kaelik]

A straight Jedi will lack horribly in the skill department.

Which would matter if you couldn't just declare yourself to be using your use the force skill in place of any other skill you might want to roll.

But since you can, meh.

[TheWorid]

I found SAGA pretty hilarious. The one time I played it, I was invited specifically to show the other players that their characters were not hot shit (I'd never touched the system, but he wanted them to not run around expecting to be able to kill everything).

I ended literally every encounter with "I force choke him."

The Force powers the books give range from "Who would ever take this" to "Who wouldn't take this". Force Grip and Force Lightning can be taken at level 1, and the latter especially shows how game-breakingly poorly put together some of them are; Force powers generally scale by check result, but Force Lightning deals 8d6 damage out of the box (it never gets better, though, while Move Object scales up to large amounts and damage and battlefield control).

Note that Jedi are extremely MAD, which cuts down on their power. Making a non-jedi Force User is entirely doable, though, and the best way to get utility abilities; there are virtually no non-combat feats or talents in the game. Despite this, skill monkeying works well because skills are never made irrelevant, not counting the (easy to do) tactic of just buying a droid to do all your piloting, computer, and mechanics stuff.

[Slade]

Force Stun is better if you don't want dark points. Before errata I mean...stupid nerfing errata.

[Surgo]

Two things I remember in my reading and review of Saga:

- Play a Jedi
- If for some reason you don't want to play a Jedi, play a droid. (Level 1 as Noble, so you can take the wealth talent and fuck around with enormously asymmetric power).

It's not like it's out-of-genre for non-Jedi to be as good as Jedi, I mean, we even have examples in the films (Jango Fett and...uh...Jango Fett). So I don't see why this is perpetually a problem in every single Star Wars RPG released so far.

[magnuskn]

A straight Jedi will lack horribly in the skill department.

Which would matter if you couldn't just declare yourself to be using your use the force skill in place of any other skill you might want to roll.

But since you can, meh.

Uh, okay? Yeah, you can buy with your few precious talents the ability to use the "Use the Force" skill instead of the real skill. That means, one talent for each skill you want to substitute.

Doing so means that you are not deflecting, blocking, redirecting, getting DR 10, resetting your condition track, and all the other cool stuff you can do only with your Jedi talents.

--
And for the other guys: No, playing a Jedi is not "I win" in this game. Sorry, it just isn't.

Jedi get few skill points and got to live by a restrictive code. Playing a force-sensitive non-Jedi is usually the way to have the best combination of skill and force-power versatility.

[PhoneLobster]

As a general rule I think saga edition min maxing probably looked a lot like a party of Jedi specializing in Force Use skill and using powers and talents that let them substitute their maxed out Force Use for basically every roll in the game.

Force Using things like Force Stun would knock almost anyone down faster than, well anything and with a small range rather than in melee (where all the closest comparisons were).

Then there were prestige classes and talents or feats or Darkside traits or some crap I can't remember that would let you enhance force powers like getting an extra swift action force power a turn, or better yet extending the range on your force powers I am pretty sure that one of those upgrades could extend the range to "system". Also I think there was a force power that let you do remote psychic viewing.

Force powers were used on a X Per Encounter basis.

So an optimized Saga Edition Party are as follows - Four Or Five elderly Obi Wans and Yodas in a Millennium Falcon, they have a very angry pet womp rat in their ship closet.

When they arrive in "System" about a dozen of their highest ranking enemies all start feeling sleepy, and choking or getting inexplicably electrocuted. When that starts to wear off somewhere in the asteroid belt 5 old men open the womp rat closet and play "tackle the womp rat", then lock it back away ending that "encounter", then the choking and the fainting spells return to their enemies.

Normal parties actually had to go and at least wave hi to their enemies.

[magnuskn]

As a general rule I think saga edition min maxing probably looked a lot like a party of Jedi specializing in Force Use skill and using powers and talents that let them substitute their maxed out Force Use for basically every roll in the game.

Force Using things like Force Stun would knock almost anyone down faster than, well anything and with a small range rather than in melee (where all the closest comparisons were).

Then there were prestige classes and talents or feats or Darkside traits or some crap I can't remember that would let you enhance force powers like getting an extra swift action force power a turn, or better yet extending the range on your force powers I am pretty sure that one of those upgrades could extend the range to "system". Also I think there was a force power that let you do remote psychic viewing.

Force powers were used on a X Per Encounter basis.

So an optimized Saga Edition Party are as follows - Four Or Five elderly Obi Wans and Yodas in a Millennium Falcon, they have a very angry pet womp rat in their ship closet.

When they arrive in "System" about a dozen of their highest ranking enemies all start feeling sleepy, and choking or getting inexplicably electrocuted. When that starts to wear off somewhere in the asteroid belt 5 old men open the womp rat closet and play "tackle the womp rat", then lock it back away ending that "encounter", then the choking and the fainting spells return to their enemies.

Normal parties actually had to go and at least wave hi to their enemies.

This is so full of BS that I really can't be arsed to give it a proper response. You may want to read up on what the force powers really do and what their limitations are. Oh, and at which level you can first get them.

[Dr_Noface]

I found at levels 10+ defense scores were too high. Combat typically became a long, boring slugfest, barring character on mook violence.

[Username17]

I found at levels 10+ defense scores were too high. Combat typically became a long, boring slugfest, barring character on mook violence.

And at first level, hit points are too high and so are skills. The game appears to have a "sweet spot" where the basic math functions work at all that is around level 8.

All in all, I am thoroughly unimpressed. It's some half-formed 4e ideas (which as we know were shit when they were fully formed) thrown onto a d20 Modern chassis (which was embarrassingly bad).

But long boring slugfests seems to have been the "point". Rather unsurprising when you ruminate on how it got expanded into 4e D&D.

-Username17

[Orion]

Seriously, level 1 hit points were too high?

My recollection was that a level one character had like 25 HP. Enemy blasters did 10 and rifles did 14. So you can take 1 or maybe 2 shots and stay conscious.

This is a lot like having 8 HP when the goblins are shooting 1d6 crossbows at you.

[TheWorid]

Then there were prestige classes and talents or feats or Darkside traits or some crap I can't remember that would let you enhance force powers like getting an extra swift action force power a turn, or better yet extending the range on your force powers I am pretty sure that one of those upgrades could extend the range to "system". Also I think there was a force power that let you do remote psychic viewing.

Force powers were used on a X Per Encounter basis.

So an optimized Saga Edition Party are as follows - Four Or Five elderly Obi Wans and Yodas in a Millennium Falcon, they have a very angry pet womp rat in their ship closet.

When they arrive in "System" about a dozen of their highest ranking enemies all start feeling sleepy, and choking or getting inexplicably electrocuted. When that starts to wear off somewhere in the asteroid belt 5 old men open the womp rat closet and play "tackle the womp rat", then lock it back away ending that "encounter", then the choking and the fainting spells return to their enemies.

Normal parties actually had to go and at least wave hi to their enemies.

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.

[Slade]

I'll note that made Jedi the best healers with Vital Vitality (that force heal one that makes you take 1/2).

Pretty much made me awesome since usually healing can take a long time.

[Dean]

IMO I do think people are only slightly overdoing the Jedi can do everything idea. But if I may I don't think that's a point that needs to be proven. No one needs to try to prove that Jedi can replace skill monkey characters AND do better in combat. First of all because it's untrue but second of all because the point is moot and leads to a second equally valid complaint. I don't think the optimal party is 4 Jedi it's 3 Jedi and one Skill Noble. One character, literally one high intelligence character can have every skill in the game. Literally like every skill that could even potentially matter. And he can be skill focused in the 3 that ACTUALLY matter which are Mechanics, Use Computer, and arguably Pilot.

I don't think Jedi can do everything better than everyone. They just do a LOT OF THINGS better than MOST PEOPLE and one of those things is -combat-.

[Hieronymous Rex]

I'm going to repost my comments from another forum:


Classes

The Scout class (which mysteriously does not get the Treat Injury skill, even though Soldiers do) isn't so much a class as a way for Soldiers to lose a point of BAB in order to take Evasion.

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.

Feats, Talents, & Skills

Talents by the way, are the same thing as feats, except that you have to be in a certain class to take them (even though the bonus feats given by classes can only be drawn from a limited pool, making the distinction redundant).

The skill system is somewhat simplified from earlier incarnations (and this is a good thing). However, there are 3 main problems with it.

1)You cannot take skills from outside your class. At all. Even if you spend a feat on it. Your droid engineer character, being a Noble, is incapable of learning Mechanics.

2)Skills are either overly broad, or useless. All technical knowledge is either in Mechanics or Computer use, and virtually all characters will have these skills. And yet, there is a Jump skill. Let that sink in for a moment. The Endurance skill represents the same thing as Fortitude, and is thus redundant. The knowledge skills, other than Galactic Lore, are nigh worthless.

3)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.

Levels & Advancement

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.

Destinies: Good idea, poor implementation. The idea is that working towards personal goals is mechanically incentivized, and you are, through the Destiny Fulfilled bonus, which entails something like an ability score boost or a skill bonus. However, the rules for "Moving closer to fulfilling you goal" are fiddly and add nothing to the game, and Destiny points are like Force Points, but worse. Despite the uses described in the book, they exist only for destiny point wars: someone attacks you, you spend a DP to negate the attack, they spend a DP to negate yours, etc.. They suffer from a problem similar to that of Perfect Defenses in Exalted.


Droids

Two methods of playing droids are given; treating them as a race that is rolled up normally, or playing a stock model. However, the second option is a a mess of unclear rules and trap options, in part because "nonheroic" levels should not exist. As a side not, droids have no Constitution score, a rule that has been stupid in every game it has been in. Mysteriously, they still have Fortitude and can make Endurance checks.

Jedi & The Force

Jedi are grossly overpowered, but you probably expect that. The real weird part is the way that force powers are used: you select a "suite" of force powers; if you take the same power twice you will get to use it twice. Every encounter, you can use each power in your suite once. Given that this setup is alien to the movies and books (and videogames, for that matter), I do not know why it was included.

If you don't houserule to allow non-Jedi force users to take the Jedi class but not get the lightsaber proficiency, they more or less can't be used. While one could play a force user that didn't take the Jedi class, it would gimp them something awful, since they would not be able to use their talents or bonus feats on the Force.

Force points: just like every other "action point" system shoved into every game since the 90s. Move along, nothing to see here.

Combat

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. Attacks of Opportunity are still in the game (despite having had 3 editions to realize that they are a terrible idea). Lightsaber attacks are based on Strength, for some reason. Also, some lightsabers are referred to as "well balanced", which is impossible and a misunderstanding of the term.

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.

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.

Starships

The starship rules vary between two extremes: simplistic, and bean-counting. On the simplistic side, the hyperspace travel rules are a downgrade from the earlier SW D20 games, and are not even in the core book. On the bean-counting side, it never occurred to the authors to use a damage "scale" system (like in D6); instead, every single attack has you rolling 6-10 dice, and multiplying the result, for damage. On top of that, the shield rules result in every ship rolling a Mechanics check to recover 5 points of Shield Rating, every turn.