Phonelobster Shakes The Angry Fist at Star Wars Saga

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fectin
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Post by fectin »

Guys, you're arguing about implications. "Facts" and "opinions" are red herrings here.
Also, saying that PL is lying is a pretty big jump, even if he is wrong.
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Post by DSMatticus »

fbmf wrote:DSM, Dean, and others: I understand that, with Evasion, PL's example was skewed to prove his point and you've got him on that.

Multi classing? PL says it sucks, and Insomniac ( and Korwin) says it doesn't. PL is talking about rules. Korwin starts talking about house rules to fix multi classing while claiming multi lasting doesn't suck. Insomniac just says PL is wrong but doesn't bother to offer any support for that idea.

Game On,
fbmf
Funnily, evasion is still relevant; the easiest (only?) way to get evasion is to take a one level dip in scout. But noble is another example; a one level dip is five thousand credits every level. A three level "dip" is 30,000 credits and another fifteen thousand credits every level after that. Those are substantial sums of money. Every class in the game gives a talent at level 1, and most of the game's ULTIMATE COSMIC POWAH!!1! is hidden in talents and equipment.
fectin wrote:Guys, you're arguing about implications. "Facts" and "opinions" are red herrings here.
Also, saying that PL is lying is a pretty big jump, even if he is wrong.
Implications are factual. Opinions is a red herring, which is why I tried to cut that off. But it doesn't really matter; ultimately we seem to agree and there's no argument to be had here except about what words mean and while I'm totally right and ill fite u if u disagree it'd really just be kind of pointless and dumb and exactly the thing I was trying to avoid in the first place so let's not do that and agree that we're headed to the same place.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

fbmf wrote:DSM, Dean, and others: I understand that, with Evasion, PL's example was skewed to prove his point and you've got him on that.
I'm really going to have to say they haven't.

Back in the Evasion example it was actually a response directly to the claim "storm troopers kill you!". I didn't select the level 2 party. (and also the more accurate level 4) party examples I used in the "infamous" post because they proved my point, I selected them because I went and looked up the rules to actually find out when and how many storm troopers you are actually supposed to fight according to the system.

In fact I find it hilarious that when complaining about my example "cherry picking" a positive scenario they ignore the fact it discussed multiple levels of party and multiple sizes of storm trooper opposition (and even upgraded alternatives to storm troopers later parties will be fighting), and instead only mention it included the lowest level most cherry picky example that favors their claim that they can find in it.

Dean and DSM keep dismissing the CL rules as "just guidelines no one evar uses!!!". But... they are all we have. All I did was go to the book and ask it "storm troopers... how many and when?" and work from the answer it gave. If I didn't use those "guidelines" to figure out how many storm troopers at once against what party I should test these claims on... then where the hell was I supposed to go? There simply ARE no other rules on how many storm troopers you are supposed to fight at what party level.

I either use the CL and Multiple Enemy "guidelines" Dean and DSM say don't mean shit or there is NOTHING.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

The Galaxy Gazetteer
It's some campaign background fluff material of only marginal utility wasting an entire chapter of limited space. Yay. What do we learn from it though?

Well one thing we learn in the first entry is that the planetary population notes aren't shy of referring directly to large populations of species and/or ethnic groups (doesn't say which) never covered in this book. So you better be a fan of extended universe if you want to know what the fuck it's talking about at this point.

We also learn that the game really likes trivial information to be walled behind some fairly bullshit high bullshit Knowledge skill checks, this chapter mostly lays the love on for Knowledge (Galactic Lore), Knowledge (Social Sciences) and Knowledge(Life Sciences).

It's all pretty much definitively trivial stuff. But it IS interesting the game chooses to set actual hard context free DCs for specific pieces of knowledge. It could have all sorts of hilarious outcomes if anyone ever really bothered to use this shit.

Some of the DCs are actually kinda laughably high for trivial information everyone is just sorta supposed to know anyway, and there are some moments where even obvious things like the Kel Dor's need for breath masks to survive are walled behind a DC 15 Life Sciences check because... REALLY?

Minor highlights in trivial knowledge and other random details?

Galactic Lore 20 – Cloud City has Ugnaughts (they built it and are still around). Who or what they are is a mystery.

Galactic Lore (hahaha, sure) 25 – Lets you know there is a gas giant whale thing down there under cloud city. Like you care.

Social Sciences 30 (no really) – Gamorians are ruled by Matriarchs. It must be a pretty fucking big secret apparently.

It takes a DC 15 Social Sciences check to know WHY the Quarren and the Mon Calimari hate each other, but it takes a DC 25 Galactic Lore check to know at all that they DO hate each other.

Bureaucracy 15 – Naboo is democratically elects a monarch ruler and there are no age limits on voting or running for office. Apparently also no limits on sudden random clown makeup or total lack of on screen charisma.

Its Galactic Lore 20 to know that the Rodians went through a historical phase where they hunted each other for sport. But it's DC 25 to discover their darkest secret... that they are shit at being farmers.

Sullust is run by a Corporatation!!! It grew so powerful through profiting on trade that it siezed total planetary control from the former government!!!! The corporation runs the planet like a business!!! But a nice charitable one that cares about people and not about profits. That sort of like a business that grew on trade profits so much it overthrew a planetary government.,

Pod Racicing is behind an almost sufficiently concealing DC 20 Galactic Lore wall. SO YOU NEVER HAVE TO KNOW THE TERRIBLE TRUTH.

Astrogation Mechanics
And then there are mechanics handling astrogation. Right here in the Gazetteer, because yeah this is where you'd look right?

Anyway. Astrogation checks are bullshit easy if the GM likes you and lets you have Astrogation Data for your destination, and bullshit hard if he dislikes you and doesn't want you to go there with lots of potential negative modifiers and if you fail by 5 your ship is disabled and drifting in the endless void between worlds (unless you suck the GMs cock enough to have him let you arrive SOMEWHERE interesting/escapable).

Basically Astrogation is a potential DC wall that says two things, one is “you must have an astrogation droid or waste some PC's skill slot on Use Computer or you aren't allowed to travel between adventure sites” and the other is “you travel to the adventure sites on the GM railroad only.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Gamemastering
It's totally a word, and a chapter.

Anyway, gamemastering, apparently it's easy, and fun, and proud, with countless responsibilities and fun opportunities like that!

Whatever fluffity fluffity fluff fluff...

… cross promotion of Star Wars minis, battle mats and galaxy tiles...

Bonus Stacking
Turns up, tells us nothing with the same name stacks except dodge. And also circumstance, but only circumstantially. In a vague way, so we never really know for sure when circumstance bonuses will stack, or won't because they are “essentially the same circumstance” which we can only hope is more narrow and specific than “a good one”, but which we don't actually have an answer on. All penalties get to stack.

House Rules Are Immortal
It actually tells you that if you make up a house rule to stick with it unchanged forever afterwards. No proviso's or advice about fixing it later, delaying such decisions until you can consider them, just straight up if you have to pull something out of your arse you should totally keep it forever afterwards.

The One True House Rule
Circumstantial +2 bonus or -2 penalty apparently solves just about every gap in the rules you could possibly imagine! Lets try it, like the one where an NPC droid turns up and isn't allowed to roll Initiative in combat. That sort of rule gap, rife in the system, solved! By a +/-2 circumstantial modifier to a roll the droid cannot even make but must make?

Try not to look up rules
But don't expect the needless page flipping in this bullshit small paged book to help you out there YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN KID!

It's totally a good thing and within your rights as a GM to cheat
But keep it secret!

Because that just makes it better!

Actually there are a few moments like this scattered through the GM advice... ick...

THE CHALLENGE LEVEL RULES!!!!
Oh boy, so anyway. Take the old marginally serviceable but flawed d20 Challenge Rating stuff. Then, randomly remove things and pick various numbers out of your ass to replace only small portions of the swathes of stuff you drop. Then you have the Saga Edition Challenge Level rules.

It works as well as you might have guessed doing that would. Which is to say among other things the rules themselves flat out state that it's a bad idea to present encounters with less than 2 or more than 6 opponents. You can do 1 enemy encounters occasionally as boss fights, but any more than 12 opponents is flat out "overwhelm the PCs" territory.

Also you get your CL by adding things together then randomly dividing by 3. which does mean that if you DO exceed the lower “advised” limit and have 1 opponent you are fighting CL twenty opponents (like say a level 20 character... or a Star Destroyer, while your PCs are on foot) at party level 7ish. But hey. Your party (on foot) still fights a Star Destroyer and 1 Tie Fighter in the “sweet spot” of 2 or more opponents somewhere around a level later.

That basically demonstrates one of the main problems right there. The whole add then divide by 3 thing has no upper or lower limits on individual CL contributions and outside of the lowest level encounters against pretty much same level/CL opponents it regularly produces pretty insane results.

And that's just a “tough but fair” encounter, hell, you can even fight the early star destroyer type encounters a party level lower and it is still “tough but fair”. That star destroyer and tie fighter aren't considered “taxing” until you are 2-3 levels lower and aren't considered potentially PC killing until you are 4 levels or more lower.

And while the CL system does tell you the various combined CL compared to average party level values it considers “fair”, “taxing” and “a real fight that may kill one or more PCs” there are no other categories and there are no guidelines of how many of any encounter type/difficulty you should actually throw at your PCs.

Lower difficulty encounters are a complete non-entity until you get to the rewards section. Where they become explicitly worth less (or in some cases worthless) for rewards.

Oh and “extra PCs” or missing PCs beyond the standard 4 have weird math too, so they add or subtract one from the calculated group CL of opponents AFTER adding it all together and dividing by 3. and yes, that will do weird shit. Like how no matter your party level if you are just 1 PC then all the rest of your party is always worth only about 9 (total) CL of opposition, again, even if you are a high level character off fighting a total CL of over 40, like Star Destroyers and junk where that is small change at best.

XP!
All this leads into your calculations for XP rewards! Which are about standard and if you fight the implied standard “tough but fair” encounters the Challenge Level rules seem to focus on forever its something like 5 encounters per level. Give or take, whatever. Fighting in the other categories is less dependable as at even level 1 and 2 fighting an opponent in the “will probably kill one or more PCs” range will net you a full level for your level 1 party, but barely more than half the XP you need for your next level if you are a level 2 party. So I'm pretty sure the whole thing is basically built on the expectation of the “tough but fair” category only, forever.

Fortunately we finally start getting some mention of lower level threats here. We don't know when or how many low level encounters you are supposed to have. But we DO know if they get low enough CL (individually, because fuck common sense and the way the earlier rules work) they provide significantly less XP.

Wealth By Level
Isn't precisely a thing. But it IS stupidly written and marginally contradictory. You aren't supposed to get Credits except from “benefactors” (read GM rail road story prizes). BUT you have a guideline for rewards per encounter. (about 500x a character's level per character, only it doesn't scale up or down for parties with more or less than 4 heroes so... WTF?), that's for “tough but fair” encounters, and easier ones (that finally exist enough to get a mention) get half or nothing, but “taxing” ones give you only 50% extra and “likely to kill a few PCs” don't even rate a mention. But even though you get per encounter wealth reward guidelines (crap as they are) you are then encouraged to give them out as quest rewards and so forth instead.

BUT remember we also don't actually have a guideline on how many encounters of what difficulty you are actually supposed to face. We can intuit an implied 5x tough but fair encounters per level as a standard /average to work off and to get a general idea of how many credits of stuff a party is expected to earn over the course of a game, but we never actually get that made explicit, we never get it in a more convenient table format, and we never get an explanation how the fuck this interacts with expenses especially since those apparently include (possibly mandatory) monthly upkeep, and daily lodging and food costs.

Oh and your wealth drops may include items you find, no particular limits or guidelines on the value of individual item drops, whatever you like apparently. But the GM is explicitly told to discourage looting and selling (despite all the looting and selling mechanics in the game including dedicated haggling talents etc...) and is flat out told to completely not tell anyone about “boring” loot drops. Oh and the GM is basically told to kick players in the nuts and actually start using the encumbrance rules if they start looting stuff. Because in this game even the game itself flat out tells you applying it's own rules as written is a form of punishing disincentive.

Notably things like Storm Trooper Armour are probably significantly off the scale of the wealth/item rewards for the first party levels at which players will fight storm troopers. The game's suggestion is that the GM talk down storm trooper armour and describe it as "crappy and smelly" and stuff and that if the players STILL take the rather excellent for their level armour item... to start pulling annoying encumbrance accounting you are apparently supposed to normally ignore and other such basically old school assholery.

What about NPC allies and vehicles and...
Look too bad, there aren't accommodations for how getting in an X-Wing effects your party level or how bringing 500 NPC battle droids with you works.

Unless you count “Beneficial Circumstances” for some reason defined in the text as “Beyond the heroes control” and without any actual meaty rules or guidelines that could actually help us in the situation of having allies or driving readily available and encouraged combat vehicles.

Staggered Encounter CLs
Oh, and then later on in the building adventures section it talks about staggered arrivals of opponents in combats and their interaction with group CL ratings, which is to say NONE, apparently staggering enemy arrival times has no effect on encounter difficulty and you just add them all together and divide by 3 as usual. I mean, assuming you even found this rule hidden outside the Challenge Rating rules section.

Gravity And Lighting
Get their own rules sections. Notably the most powerful light source on the table is the Fusion Lantern and it only provides standard lighting as far as you can walk in a single move action.

Everything Else Is A “Hazard”
Acid, dangerous atmospheres, and blindness and disease and the falling Object rules and falling off things, and fire, and poison, and smoke. And most of those are hazards I guess, but also many of them are conditions and ah whatever they were short on space for the actual rules after countless pages of useless wank.

And also for some reason “Traps and Security Systems” is a sub heading under hazards. Which makes sense for explosive traps and turrets and stuff. Only it is actually “Smoke” which is a sub heading under Hazards and then “Traps and Security Systems” are a subheading under “Smoke”. Revised version of this book people REVISED.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Eras Of Play
They just didn't have enough space to separate conditions and hazards and cover them properly and stuff. WELL WHO CARES. Now it's time for a bunch of fluffy Eras Of Play.

So far all we know is there are THREE, THREE era's of play, 1) The Prequel Movies, 2) The Movies people like, 3) Stuff no one has heard of after the movies people like, and 4) Any other era you like because the game cannot count and doesn't actually want to restrict itself to 3 eras even after deciding that it would and telling everyone.

Also we already know the main impact of all this that we've seen up until now is just that the prequels era fucks over anyone wanting to be a sith, and the post movie era encourages the GM to drop Luke in for cameos if you have Jedi in your party.

So now we fill out our information further.

It goes out of the way to point out that the prequels era is the “not racist” one, but then doesn't tell us about the racist era being the racist one because it chickens out on that or something.

The new jedi oder era just mostly goes on about the god damn Yuuzhan Vong and invasion of the galaxy to destroy all non-bioengineered tech. Because hey people are totally going to do that plot line instead of fighting storm troopers and vader clones in remnants of the empire story lines right? Oh and apparently the Yuuzan Vong plot line is finished up with a deus ex machina with a living planet turning up and saying “welcome home” in the middle of the final great battle and taking most of the galaxy sized threat with it (on a single planet) off on a camping trip outside the main plot relevant map. Because that makes that stuff even better!

Eras of play however has got us some famous NPC write ups. And there is BOUND to be something there...

But not really, not entertaining anyway, we learn nothing we didn't know and see no builds you wouldn't particularly expect from the terrible state of the available classes, there are some horrible Ace Pilot levels inflicted on various characters, Amidala is in there pretending 10 levels of The Fucking Noble class and a sub standard sporting pistol is TOTALLY worth CR 10, Luke seems to have taken Skill Training in Use The Force even though I'm pretty sure that he should not actually have the resources to do so after stupidly starting his career with a level of scout instead of Jedi which IS otherwise accounted for... but I was hoping for some glaring great fun stupid thing...

Well for some reason “supporting characters” get a separate section to “main characters” even though that makes no sense because this is an RPG and they are all just “NPCs from the movies”. The supporting characters has some marginally more interesting material, but is still sorta dull...

Chewbacca is clearly going into a wookie rage at getting top billing in supporting chracters instead of main characters. But he is pretty terrible considering what his build could be with that wookie rage, instead he mostly is a shitty Scout Scoundrel (a double threat... of sucking) who focuses on shooting stuff....

The big named comic relief droids get mere supporting status, and lumped with their first levels being non-heroic because “fuck those guys am I rite”?

Yoda appears just to flaunt the fact he is a non-standard small species no one else can select and which is never described anywhere in this book, including in Yoda's entry.

But then General Grievous shows up to out do Yoda by being both a non-standard species never described anywhere including here, AND by being some sort of full body cyborg organic droid hybrid with not enough unique rules even here.

And while Bobba Fet gets an appearance, Jabba the Hut doesn't.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

And THEN we get Allies And Opponents
“Named Character NPCs” apparently belonging in Eras of play instead of the Allies and Opponents chapter. Which seems a poor layout choice. But whatever.

Beasts
Wild animal monsters get their own character class. It's a shitty non-heroic NPC character class. It's if anything even worse than you might think.

You get no starting feats, minimum skills, no starting HP boost, no force points, no destiny points, no level to defense, no level to damage, half the attribute bonuses as you level up, bad BAB, no apparent class bonuses to defense, and only d8 hit die.

There are sorta good things to be had, you can have crappy natural attacks, almost arbitrary but level capped natural armour, and some minor (very minor) animal themed mobility. You can be different sizes and if you choose “bigger” you can have significantly larger bonuses to Str and Con than other d20 games do for size ups on monsters.

It's an NPC class for boring brutes and we don't really care all that much if it sucks, indeed it probably should, but actually it fails on a few points where it REALLY should do better. The lack of skills and starting feats is particularly striking, and there isn't much choice of further customisation options, this makes for REALLY boring beasts, and if you ARE going to fight custom designed beasts you want them to do... things... something damnit. Not JUST one skill, few feats, large size for powa and a god damned bite attack, every god damn time.

Oh and if a beast ups its intelligence with attribute bonuses to be higher than the “1 or 2” (pick two, yes pick), they start with to a 3 then they are allowed to multiclass. So you can take 4 levels of beast then totally have your Rancor start taking levels of Jedi or better yet ACE FUCKING PILOT!!! AH nuts, you would need to take 7 heroic levels first because of “fuck you heroic level limits bitch” requirements on every fucking thing, but still Ranor 4, Jedi 7, ACE PILOT starting from level god damned 12 IT'S ON PORKINS YOU REBEL PILOT SCUM! RANCOR PILOT JEDI IS OUT TO GET YOU

And as interesting as a rancor ace piloting an XXL tie fighter might be... sadly none of the sample beast NPCs proceed to exploit that OBVIOUS direction for character development.

What the beast entries DO get is some random monster abilities that come from apparently nowhere and which the “here, build a beast with this class!” rules never even MENTION I mean at all, not even a “beasts can totally have other abilities and stuff” entry. Not even like AT ALL. Just here is how to write beast characters, here are some beast characters we wrote up and they also have some extra stuff in them...

The extra stuff isn't very exciting but they totally could have put rage, fast healing, sneak dice and a rake attack on the fucking beast class as selectable options or SOMETHING it would have been a very marginal improvement of them just materializing out of thin air.

So what CL are beasts?
Oh... I don't know. The book just fucking does not say. The beast class never mentions it then the specific beast entries just HAVE listed CLs. They follow a predictable pattern of always being 1 lower than Hit die/beast level... except for some reason the Reek that has the same CL as it's hit die/level. So no actual idea how beast CL is calculated, I'm going to strongly suggest it is PROBABLY pulled entirely out of someone's ass, and they didn't even bother to mention that.

The NPC class
Remember those shit NPC levels premade droids get lumped with that don't give you any of the basic numbers real heroes get. They're back for the NPC chapter.

NPCs probably should suck, and do, it's a pity an entire category of droid hero gets lumped with the same bullshit though. The NPC class or “non-heroic character” is basically a beast with an intelligence score, crappy d4s for hit die and some actual starting feats to pick.

So what CL is the NPC Class
Again. NO IDEA. The game never says. NPC humanoids seem to follow a pattern of Non-Heroic levels being worth 1/3rd their level in CL. But really it might just be “pulled out of ass but we aren't saying” again.

Why would you need to know NPC CL?
Well aside from the god damned thing where you are apparently encouraged to make custom NPC allies and enemies there is a god damn prestige class who gets NPC allies of a certain CL value and we have NO WAY OF KNOWING WHAT THAT VALUE MEANS.

The entries?
I pretty much couldn't be assed at this point. There are a few criminals and about half of it is different flavors and levels of storm troopers.

STILL NO JAWAS!
We get some new alien races here. Walrus face guy, Yuzz... whatever they are..., Hutts, and the iconic Neimoidians???

But STILL NO JAWAS.

Aqualish
Walrus Face man gets net -2 attribute modifiers (we knew it in advance surely?) at +2 Con, -2 wis and -2 cha. Then he gets fish man water breathing and swimming stuff and Toughness as a bonus feat. The usual two languages. All of them are big meanies like the one in the movie because fluff can't evolve apparently.

Hutts
+2 Str, +2 Con, +2 Int, -6 Dex, incredibly low movement speed. Significant bonuses to Will vs Force checks, sort of large sized, immunity to being knocked over, the ability to reroll persuasion checks, its mostly minor penalties and a damage threshold bonus. The usual two languages, though I'm under the impression Huttese is more important than most of the other non-basic languages.

Hutts are actually sorta good. They almost deserve an LA (not that those exist in this system, or indeed ANY such accounting for this stuff) If you can somehow deal with the massive dump of dex and the low speed you are good to go. I say be a block/deflect specialist Jedi Hutt and buy a jet pack and you are pretty much set.

Neimoidians
Like their iconic example from the source fiction, Neiman from Seinfeld, they are evil lizard men sorta? Actually they are those sorta racist caricature trade federation dudes from the much loved Phantom Menace.

They get +2 Int, +2 Wis, and -2 Str. They get Skill Focus Deception free if they train Deception at first level. That actually isn't that bad for one of the questionable skills. AND they get to reroll (but must keep second roll) the Deception skill too. They get the language people care about AND 2 other languages people don't care about!

Neimodians actually are pretty good. Must be why they are hidden in the NPC, beg the GM to let you use it section.

Yuuzhan Vong
Are the major threat for like an entire era of play, so they get a species entry and no NPC write ups. Look, they know you are fighting the 20,000 flavors of storm troopers they provide, lets face it the Yuuzhan Vong are only here to PRETEND this book covers as many eras as prior books.

But anyway. +2 Str, -2 Wis, can't take force sensitive and can't make use the force checks, and don't get force points. But they are immune to all will based force effects. They take -5 to all attacks and skill checks using mechanical items. They get to be proficient with their stupid snake staff thing. They ONLY get to speak their language that no one cares about.

Yeah, NPC species only really. The PC version might be a nice trade off for force immunity, until you realize you permadie at 0HP and can never have the force point required to prevent that. In the mean time as an NPC they are a marginal fuck you to a few edge case Mind Trick or maybe Haze using PCs which is unfortunate but not that big a deal.

But you write Alien NPCs yourselves, because the book cannot be bothered
As mentioned again in a moment, these NPCs are human, you are left a homework excercise to convert them to aliens.

This sorta works (with some working out time rather than convenient look ups) for the criminal guys. But is kinda weird on storm troopers and leaves me wondering how the hell the NPC section pretends it's supporting the Yuuzhan Vong era of play...

H is for Human
Apparently. See all the non-heroic NPCs are ALL humans. The text tells you this. Then it tells you that you can customize them to non-human by removing a feat and a trained skill and applying species traits. Then all the entries include the bonus feat and the bonus trained skill in their profile.

BUT THEN. All of the entries end in a line that reads “H Human bonus feat or trained skill”. Which is odd, since it should read AND, but also odd because the entry probably shouldn't be there or read like what seems to be a drafting note that survived to printing and indeed printing of the god damned Revised edition.

FINALLY The End!
And on that note we are finally done. The first book. I may cover others, not sure, might throw in some builds, probably joke ones if I did like the many armed droid, and the NPC Rancor Ace Pilot, as that's about the only fun to be had building characters in this system, but what I will DEFINITELY do is write up a conclusion/summing up post for the review of the core book noting the apparent major themes and notable surprises from the core. But that will be later as I don't have it drafted in advance like the rest of this stuff.
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Post by Insomniac »

For Hutts, they usually get put into the Noble/Crime Lord role for movie purposes, and having a bonus against the Force and re-rolling Persuasion works well for a character like that.

Since this was the edition of 4E dry run, they put in a feat that lets you substitute your Intelligence Modifier for your Dexterity modifier to your Reflex Save called Predictive Defense. Since it is a bonus feat for Nobles and Scoundrels it works pretty well for Hutts, to the point where it is like a Feat Tax on the species.

Since Noble and Scoundrel and other talent and feat modifiers to combat and things like the Impel Ally are going to be what a Hutt PC will be doing anyhow, so long as your are comfortable in getting a nice melee weapon and realize that with a -6 Dex and tanking Dex your Initiative score will stink and you won't be able to hit the broad side of a barn in Ranged combat, with Predictive Defense you're pretty well set.

One thing with the system is that some species become noticeably better than others for certain builds to the point where even taking the default species of Human can put you behind pretty quickly. There are too many niche roles and later species too specced out to be Perfect for a certain role.

Despite this, most parties will have considerable Human members, if not solely have Human members.
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Post by Insomniac »

Another funky thing about the system worth noting is that Initiative is a skill (???) and rather than having an Improved Initiative feat, Skill Focus (Initiative) can be taken to get +5 to Initiative. One feat lets you apply full class level to an attack if you win Initiative, and it can be a pretty big game changer.

Most PCs, NPCs, Beasts and Droids are not trained in this so it is a full +10 advantage on Initiative that a PC can have on almost everything he or she or it fights.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Insomniac wrote:Another funky thing about the system worth noting is that Initiative is a skill (???)
I mentioned that maybe 5 times. Along with some of the stranger interactions (like non-heuristic droids not being allowed to roll Initiative unless they are trained in it).

And yes, compared to the NPCs who for some reason frequently don't take this key skill it's almost like the designers said "should we just make it a rule that PCs can go first if they want?" and the answer they came up with was "not exactly..."
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Post by DSMatticus »

PL wrote:Back in the Evasion example it was actually a response directly to the claim "storm troopers kill you!". I didn't select the level 2 party. (and also the more accurate level 4) party examples I used in the "infamous" post because they proved my point, I selected them because I went and looked up the rules to actually find out when and how many storm troopers you are actually supposed to fight according to the system.
This is a perfect example of why PL is a lying asshole. Not only are those not what the CL rules say, no one has dismissed the CL rules. What people have openly mocked is PL's claim that the following paragraph is an inviolate prohibition against having too many enemies in a single combat:
The book wrote:Multiple Opponents: Encounters with two to six opponents work best. Save the single-opponent encounter for higher-CL "bosses" like the rancor or Darth Vader. Avoid encounters with more than a dozen opponents unless you want the heroes to feel overwhelming.
PL in this review wrote:I know it is completely insane that something like only 5 out of like 9000 or so storm troopers are allowed to get off their star destroyer and join it in combat against you while the rest can stay on board to be nothing but an optional admin headache.
The actual formula for the CL of an encounter says that 26 stormtroopers are a CL 8 encounter for a party of four. Stormtroopers attack with their blaster rifles at +4 and deal 3d8 damage. Using autofire (-5 penalty), they attack at -1 (total) and deal 3d8 damage but get to deal half damage on a miss. Against a target without evasion and assuming the stormtroopers never beat the target's reflex score, those 26 stormtroopers will deal an average of 175.5 damage each round. Which is more than enough to kill an eighth level PC.

If you are missing more than half the time you will on average deal less than half of your weapon's damage per attack. When you use autofire against an opponent without evasion, half of your weapon's damage is the per attack minimum. It follows that you should switch to autofire when you need an 11 or higher to hit your opponent. That happens to stormtroopers at reflex 15.

Let's pick the two classes PL has shit on the most: scouts and nobles. We're going to assume 16 dex.
Scouts: 10 base + 3 dex + 2 class + [level or armor, whichever is higher].
Nobles: 10 base + 3 dex + 1 class + [level or armor, whichever is higher].

You will note that simply plugging in a level of 1 yields a reflex score of 15 or higher. Out of the gate autofire is a better option against completely naked level 1's with even moderately high dex scores. And this is a system where defensive attributes go up higher than offensive attributes, so this situation gets worse and not better. Boba Fett is seriously expected to roll a 16 just to shoot himself in the face, but Boba Fett does not have evasion and does have a grenade launcher and a flamethrower. Unless there is a nearby sarlacc Boba Fett's best bet at suicide is setting himself on fire.
PL wrote:In fact I find it hilarious that when complaining about my example "cherry picking" a positive scenario they ignore the fact it discussed multiple levels of party and multiple sizes of storm trooper opposition (and even upgraded alternatives to storm troopers later parties will be fighting), and instead only mention it included the lowest level most cherry picky example that favors their claim that they can find in it.
PL mentioned level 2 and level 4 parties, the levels at which 6 and 12 stormtroopers are an appropriate encounter respectively. He did not do any analysis on alternatives to stormtroopers, he just said that heavy stormtroopers exist and "ignore evasion outright." That is not a thing they do, and while their attack rolls are higher their weapon is a light repeating blaster rifle which only has the options to autofire (-5 penalty, half damage on a miss) or burst fire (-5 penalty, +2 damage dice). That complicates things, but it looks like this:
Autofire: hit 13.5, miss 6.75.
Burst fire: hit 22.5, miss 0.

Autofire and burstfire hit on the same rolls, so if X is the number of rolls they hit on it's
13.5*X+6.75*(20-X)
22.5*X

In this case autofire beats out burstfire when you need to roll 13 or higher than your opponent's reflex score to hit (X=8). For heavy stormtroopers that happens at either 15 or 18 depending on whether or not they had an opportunity to brace. Bracing is honestly pretty easy, which means that against naked level 1's they actually should use burstfire. But as you may have guessed, naked level 1's are not a particularly interesting example and slapping on light armor or just being level 4 changes the preferred option right back to autofire. Also, just forcing the stormtroopers to move each round (chase) will prevent them from bracing, so even that is not insurmountable.

Dean picked 26 stormtroopers because that is the magic number to one round Darth Vader and that's an amusing and illustrative example of why mid- and high-level characters need evasion. Taking evasion bumps that number up to ~250. But even when the fight is just a few PC's shooting at a few dudes, having evasion is mathematically superior to not having evasion in almost all cases. It will reduce incoming damage by an amount proportional to how difficult you are to hit with a normal attack, and because PC's are usually quite difficult to hit that's a considerable gain in survivability.

PL has had nothing to offer this conversation except his willingness to lie about what other people have said and do incredibly shitty analysis.
Last edited by DSMatticus on Sun Nov 09, 2014 3:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Insomniac »

Later on there are some ways to get around burst fire and autofire just dealing tons of damage. Darth Vader with a Force Shield could as a reaction on his average roll use a force power like Force Shield from the supplement Force Unleashed to get a Shield of 20 against those attacks.

Even somebody as strong as Vader should have some trouble against 30 people firing laser rifles at him. There's only so much Deflect and Negate Energy that one person can do, after all, right?

Look at the Coliseum fight. Lots of high level Jedis died against concentrated fire from dozens of opponents. There is really only so much one person can do.

A 26 on 1 scenario seems like something where Vader would be with other military personnel and he did command his own elite Special Forces strike team, the 501st (Vader's Fist).
Last edited by Insomniac on Sun Nov 09, 2014 4:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

DSMatticus wrote:What people have openly mocked is PL's claim that the following paragraph is an inviolate prohibition against having too many enemies in a single combat:
The book wrote:Multiple Opponents: Encounters with two to six opponents work best. Save the single-opponent encounter for higher-CL "bosses" like the rancor or Darth Vader. Avoid encounters with more than a dozen opponents unless you want the heroes to feel overwhelming.
And I openly mock that you are ignoring the ONLY text the entire fucking book has to contribute to "so how many storm troopers DOES the book want you to plug into the shitty CL formula?."

If you want an answer to that question, there it is "Multiple Opponents" tells you how the fucking game wants multiple opponents in encounters handled. Your ENTIRE fucking rant is "I want to fucking ignore that text so I will". Then you complain that the heroes are overwhelmed by groups that fall into the "heroes are overwhelmed" category.

Time and again. Your entire argument has been over and fucking over like a broken record "I want to ignore what the book actually says on the topic! So I just will!"
He did not do any analysis on alternatives to stormtroopers, he just said that heavy stormtroopers exist and "ignore evasion outright." That is not a thing they do,
I do apologize, but as vague and bad as the burstfire text IS burstfire IS a subtype of autofire and appears as text that implicitly modifies the autofire rule and as such works like autofire and thus deals half damage on a miss, but is changed by the text in the burst fire section so that it only targets one character with an autofire attack that deals extra damage and explicitly ignores evasion.

It is entirely possible the rules MEANT to write burst fire as a modifier for a standard attack instead, the whole thing is a badly presented mess that sadly never appears to provide an absolute and decisively explicit piece of text, but it strongly leans to the autofire sub type interpretation and you are very probably wrong on how burst fire works, and indeed you are deliberately choosing to be wrong because you think you have found a more favorable interpretation for your dishonest argument.

Indeed I really think your CONSTANT accusations of me being a dishonest asshole who cherry picks rules and interpretations of them is some serious projection. Like that time you hilariously wanted to silence this entire review "because cherry pick!". Maybe you need to calm the fuck down and deal with whatever issues you have with me in some nice alone time away from the interwebs instead of constantly thread shitting with your constant pleas that everyone ignore the portions of text that disagree with you.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Sun Nov 09, 2014 4:26 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by TiaC »

DSMatticus wrote:If you are missing more than half the time you will on average deal less than half of your weapon's damage per attack. When you use autofire against an opponent without evasion, half of your weapon's damage is the per attack minimum. It follows that you should switch to autofire when you need an 11 or higher to hit your opponent. That happens to stormtroopers at reflex 15.
Isn't it even better than that? You can still hit with autofire on. So if you normally hit 75% of the time, with autofire you'll hit 50% of the time and deal half damage the other 50% for a net zero change. So Reflex 10 is the breakpoint for stormtroopers.
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Post by DSMatticus »

PhoneLobster wrote:
DSMatticus wrote:What people have openly mocked is PL's claim that the following paragraph is an inviolate prohibition against having too many enemies in a single combat:
The book wrote:Multiple Opponents: Encounters with two to six opponents work best. Save the single-opponent encounter for higher-CL "bosses" like the rancor or Darth Vader. Avoid encounters with more than a dozen opponents unless you want the heroes to feel overwhelming.
And I openly mock that you are ignoring the ONLY text the entire fucking book has to contribute to "so how many storm troopers DOES the book want you to plug into the shitty CL formula?."

If you want an answer to that question, there it is "Multiple Opponents" tells you how the fucking game wants multiple opponents in encounters handled. Your ENTIRE fucking rant is "I want to fucking ignore that text so I will". Then you complain that the heroes are overwhelmed by groups that fall into the "heroes are overwhelmed" category.

Time and again. Your entire argument has been over and fucking over like a broken record "I want to ignore what the book actually says on the topic! So I just will!"
There it is again. It is literally just a bunch of lies and a refusal to engage with the argument I am presenting. Anyone who wants to read the text, I have given it in full and PL admits right in this very post that this is the only relevant text. That text says, verbatim, "encounters with two to six opponents work best" and "avoid encounters with more than a dozen opponents unless you want the heroes to feel overwhelmed" (I made a typo the first time around and said overwhelming, oop).

I am pointing out the obvious: that "____ works best" and "don't do ____ unless ____" are not prohibitions, and that because PL is insisting they are prohibitions he is clearly wrong. Instead of engaging me on that disagreement (a doomed effort on his part because this is a matter of very simple language about which he is objectively wrong), he is accusing me of ignoring those sections as inconvenient even as I quote those sections at him as evidence that he is wrong. PL is not arguing in good faith, he is just pretending the things that are happening aren't and talking about a bunch of things that aren't happening but would make me look bad if they were.
PhoneLobster wrote:I do apologize, but as vague and bad as the burstfire text IS burstfire IS a subtype of autofire and appears as text that implicitly modifies the autofire rule and as such works like autofire and thus deals half damage on a miss, but is changed by the text in the burst fire section so that it only targets one character with an autofire attack that deals extra damage and explicitly ignores evasion.
This is exactly enough truth in this that it looks defensible, but it actually requires a deliberately torturous reading far beyond even the strictest adherence to RAW and straight into "you can't make me not be retarded lalala can't hear you" territory. I'm going to provide the relevant rules text, PL's explanation, and then shit all over it:
Autofire wrote:Autofire is treated as an area attack (sea Area Attack, page 155). You target a 2-square-by-2-square area, make a single attack roll at a -5 penalty, and compare the result to the reflex defense of every creature in the area. Creatures you hit take full damage, and creatures you miss take half damage.
Burstfire wrote:The Burst Fire feat allows you to use a weapon set on autofire against a specific creature instead of an area. You take a -5 penalty on your attack roll but deal +2 dice of damage. ... This is not considered an area attack, so the damage cannot be reduced using the evasion talent (see below).
Below wrote:A character with the Evasion talent takes half damage from a successful autofire attack and no damage from an autofire attack that misses his reflex defense.
Evasion wrote:If you are hit by an area attack, you take half damage if the attack hit you. If the area attack misses you, you take no damage.
PL is arguing that:
1) When autofire describes the behavior of area attacks inside its own entry, that is absolutely not for the sake of clarity and ease of use but instead because the fact that autofire behaves exactly like an area attack is mechanically independent of its status as an area attack.
2) Because Burst Fire is described under the autofire heading, it inherits the behavior of autofire.
3) Because Burst Fire is not considered an area attack, evasion does not apply.
4) Because the mechanics of area attacks dealing half damage on a miss are duplicated inside the autofire entry, Burst Fire inherits those mechanics despite not being an area attack.

That shit is fucking crazy. There is no reason except crippling stupidity or simple dishonesty that anyone would read the autofire entry and think anything other than "this is redundant information describing what it means to be an area attack, and as such burst fire does not inherit the properties of an area attack because it is specifically not one in its own entry."

Thankfully, PL's theory makes a testable prediction: autofire describes a -5 penalty, and burst fire describes a -5 penalty. If burst fire is inheriting the text of autofire because of a stubborn refusal to understand context, then it will inherit the penalty of autofire and the total penalty for Burst Fire will be -10, not -5. If we look at the ARC trooper, we see that it hs a +10 (3d10+5) autofire attack option and a +10 (5d10+5) Burst Fire attack option. Theory tested, theory failed. Burst Fire does not inherit the text of autofire "because," it is its own attack option with its own rules that you can use if your gun is set to autofire mode and you have a particular feat.
TiaC wrote:Isn't it even better than that? You can still hit with autofire on. So if you normally hit 75% of the time, with autofire you'll hit 50% of the time and deal half damage the other 50% for a net zero change. So Reflex 10 is the breakpoint for stormtroopers.
Yes, I was using the minimum damage per attack without evasion, and the real breakpoint can only ever be more favorable to evasion. But having proved that naked level 1 characters benefit from evasion there is basically no goalpost left to score on and I just kind of stopped.
Last edited by DSMatticus on Sun Nov 09, 2014 5:47 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by TiaC »

DSMatticus wrote:
TiaC wrote:Isn't it even better than that? You can still hit with autofire on. So if you normally hit 75% of the time, with autofire you'll hit 50% of the time and deal half damage the other 50% for a net zero change. So Reflex 10 is the breakpoint for stormtroopers.
Yes, I was using the minimum damage per attack without evasion, and the real breakpoint can only ever be more favorable to evasion. But having proved that naked level 1 characters benefit from evasion there is basically no goalpost left to score on and I just kind of stopped.
Ah, but now naked level 1 characters who dumped Dex benefit from evasion too.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

DSMatticus wrote:There it is again. It is literally just a bunch of lies and a refusal to engage with the argument I am presenting.
You aren't presenting an argument. Your entire argument is to try and no true scottsman the very concept of game rules themselves with "it's not a 'prohibition', so I will ignore it ENTIRELY".

By your interpretation of "it's not a prohibition so I can ignore it and do what I like" you can ALSO flat out ignore the text about how high a total CL you should throw at the party. Because the actual bit about how calculated CLs 4 or more levels about the party average level will probably kill PCs is also not a "prohibition" by your stupid ass argument.

Your argument that lets you throw 26 storm troopers against anyone you feel like for no reason is also LITERALLY the same argument that would let you throw 26 Star Destroyers against anyone you feel like for no reason.

I mean the fucking CL rules didn't put an upward cap on that "4 or more" levels will kill PCs thing, they also didn't tell you that you flat out couldn't do it. So by YOUR fucking retarded reasoning attempts to determine how encounters under those rules work should also include determining the outcomes of encounters with hell, 478 Star Destroyers, because why not, IT'S NOT PROHIBITED.

Hell by extension the entire rules set has typical Rule Zero provisos and similar stuff written in, EVERY rule in the books is explicitly not a flat out prohibition by your standards. But it's no surprise that your argument leads to that end because the argument you are using is basically the same "the game can't be wrong if you just ignore the text!" shit spewed by Silva and others.
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Post by Dean »

DSMatticus wrote:That shit is fucking crazy. There is no reason except crippling stupidity or simple dishonesty that anyone would read the autofire entry and think anything other than "this is redundant information describing what it means to be an area attack, and as such burst fire does not inherit the properties of an area attack because it is specifically not one in its own entry."
Yeah his statements about Burst Fire are so fucking insane I've never even touched them. I can't even think of a time I've seen someone read a rule and come away with something that aggressively wrong. Someone around here used to have a sig to a thread where some grognard was arguing that Paladin's "Immunity to all diseases" didn't make them immune to all diseases because it didn't mention them specifically, which is the closest case I can think of.
DSMatticus wrote:Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. I am filled with an unfathomable hatred.
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Post by TiaC »

Dean wrote:
DSMatticus wrote:That shit is fucking crazy. There is no reason except crippling stupidity or simple dishonesty that anyone would read the autofire entry and think anything other than "this is redundant information describing what it means to be an area attack, and as such burst fire does not inherit the properties of an area attack because it is specifically not one in its own entry."
Yeah his statements about Burst Fire are so fucking insane I've never even touched them. I can't even think of a time I've seen someone read a rule and come away with something that aggressively wrong. Someone around here used to have a sig to a thread where some grognard was arguing that Paladin's "Immunity to all diseases" didn't make them immune to all diseases because it didn't mention them specifically, which is the closest case I can think of.
I think that was about immunity to poison. You see, immunities to disease specify that it includes magical disease. However, magical poisons don't exist, so monks' ability that makes them immune to poison does not specifically include magic poisons. This DM had houseruled in magic poisons and was using them to hose the monk.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

A Conclusion on the Core
Okay so I think this needs a conclusion on where this game is at as of the core.

First things first, is this game good?
Flat out, lets get a rating on "is this a good game to play?".

No. It's shit. It is monumental shit. It is full of errors, it is made out of un-fun abilities. It's got basically no redeeming features and is if anything a step backwards from predecessors, which is actually a bit of an achievement considering some of those include d20modern and d20 Star Wars.

Not only is it likely to make not-fun characters to play and not fun games to play in, the book isn't even fun to read. Even with a personal appreciation for works of fiction or rules that are "so bad they are good" it is STILL not fun to read.

But this isn't a surprise really for anyone. I knew enough about this book going in to know my opinion in advance, this is a common opinion held by countless people bar, apparently 2 or so VERY vocal defenders of it's alleged "acceptable mediocrity".

Still, it needed to be said up front. Going into this thing in depth didn't change my opinion, and indeed very much just reinforced it. This game is an abomination that never should have been born.

But do the numbers just work?
Well. No. You would need to do a great deal more in depth analysis than I am prepared to in order to know just how bad it is, but there are enough blatantly obvious and important places where the numbers fail (and where rules collapse into total WTF) that even the whole 4E defense (not even nessecarily true for 4E, but a popular angle) that "the numbers just work" on all those fucking incremental abilities etc... CLEARLY isn't the case.

So is it salvageable
DSM has claimed that this system is no worse than 3rd edition D&D and could be fixed by it's splat books the same way that the Tomes "fixed" 3rd edition. (Which as much as I liked them, I will note the tomes were discontinued incomplete because actually fixing 3rd editions somewhat lesser flaws turned out to be too much effort).

But anyway. I'm going with no. A firm no. I can't really point at anything in particular from Saga edition I would actually salvage. In the past that challenge has been put out to defenders of the edition... and they didn't name a single thing from Saga edition to salvage.

As for fixing. There is just too much work to do. Major base mechanics need to be altered, major numbers need to be completely redone, and pretty much every bit of ability text in the game needs to be trashed and rewritten from scratch as something significantly better and probably also as something given out on different advancement schedules.

The splat books won't be doing that, and initial forays suggest they mostly just make things worse.

But can you play a game with it?
Well yeah, you can play a game with any RPG. Pull enough bullshit out of your arse or play it as a comedy made out of joke rules and it might even be fun. For a bit. That doesn't make it a good idea.

One Surprise Was The Condition Track
I remembered the condition track being bad. Investing in it seemed pricey, the rule seemed tacked on and ill thought out.

But from the view of someone not familiar with the system it just looked "tacked on, stupid and possibly a horrible doom spiral". But it looked like a condition track build (the right ones) SHOULD be at least a fairly reasonable possibility.

While it retains those traits to some degree, it's less tacked on as it is ill thought out, and it permeates the entire system pretty well. Once I'd seen all the various interactions with the condition track I was rather surprised to find myself deciding that condition track builds had some serious, possibly insurmountable obstacles in their paths.

The two best base classes in the game BOTH get "ignore the whole condition track in one go" abilities, almost everyone gets minor "ignore bits of the condition track" abilities, and EVERYONE gets at least some ability to ignore the condition track as basic abilities available to all. Even in star ship combat this holds.

One way or another normal characters can pretty much ignore/heal the condition track damage dealt by normal attackers. And the sheer availability of further fuck you's to people depending on using condition track progression as their damage form seems to pretty squarely ensure that if you cannot drop a target using condition track damage in ONE turn you cannot depend on it working at all.

And while there probably are builds that can do that (cheapest being the force stun guy), with the possible exclusion of the force stun guy they would be elaborate, expensive and overly specialized. And yeah, also probably bad for the game, but mostly just problematic for organic progression before they start doing their thing at whatever level their full power finally kicks in.

I hadn't really expected that one.

The failure of the failure of Skill Ranks
The "one thing" this edition is REGULARLY touted as achieving is "getting skills right". And before people complain, I don't think I've seen that claim around here lately, but it certainly was one of the big things fans of this edition said back in the day.

I'll give it this. As bad as it's fundamental skill issues may be, and they are huge, the actual text and abilities of the skills themselves is probably at least better written and more formalized over all than say, the text on the d20modern skills (even if it retains/introduces it's own seriously laughably bad moments). But that is faint praise indeed.

And that really isn't what people claiming this edition "got skills right" are even talking about. They don't even know about that bit, they are talking about the whole death of skill ranks and the implementing of the front loading "untrained/trained/focused" system.

And THAT system is a fucking mess. The idea that you can let people front load +10 on their skills, then let some of those skills be Initiative or the "everything including attack and defense" skill that is Use The Force?

Then they went and added half character level anyway for administration involving division? Then DCs range from flat to opposed to... just chaos.

The inflated cost of skills despite many retaining relatively low and highly subjective value? Feats and Intelligence for skills or GTFO? No new skills for multiclassing into a class with more skills? Classes which REALLY deserve a little something extra to reward people to multiclass into them? No skills or even class skill list additions from prestige classes?

Basically on skills the designers knew there were problems in preceding systems, but had NO fucking idea how to fix them or what they were even doing.

Jedi And Soldiers are better than you
Is certainly a key issue of the system that needs to make the conclusion. But it's kinda boring and pretty well known, and for jedi at least is pretty much a tradition for crappy star wars RPGs at this point.

Still it's a major flaw and it should be better.

Star Ship Combat Just Doesn't Even...
Star ship combat is spectacularly bad.

Even aside from the numerous miswordings and outright errors of judgment.

The basic concept of having two scales but not properly covering their interaction or the conversion between them at all is almost insurmountable as a basic issue.

Similarly the whole party level/CL/mixed vehicle and infantry encounters issues being permitted to exist pretty much without any comment at all is also insurmountable.

The starship roles were mildly less offensive, they don't offer the same "the game just stops working here at all" moments of the other two major flaws. But it genuinely seems that out of various tacked on last minute additions the starship roles (hell all the starship RULES, but the roles especially) other than pilot are some of the most tacked on and shallow roles there are. How hard would it have been to just offer some more interactive options to the "lesser" roles, at least some more adaptive DCs? anything? Apparently too hard.

Destinies hit like a fucking bus out of nowhere
If you haven't read the destiny section of the review I STRONGLY suggest you do so. I had not really expected that one.

It came out of nowhere and was MASSIVELY bad. Using destinies as written is basically a pure fuck you to players everywhere of indescribable proportions.

It's made out of strong motivations and direct advice to some incredible degrees of GM fuckery, AND it has written in some giant fucking permanent rewards for just doing what you were going to do anyway OR you can die in a fire and get shit all for it, YOU DECIDE! Or, your GM does if he wants AND DOESN'T TELL YOU.

I'd say that destinies probable gets the "Worst of the Worst" and "most shocking of the surprises" award for the whole book. Even ahead of that one infinite armour upgrading talent on fur suit jedi thing, indeed, easily ahead of it.

Lack Of Content
Now THIS one issue WILL almost certainly be solved by splat books. But it is worth noting that on some key sub systems the game genuinely does simply lack content.

I do expect this at least to get fixed, I mean more stuff shouldn't fail to be more stuff right (if I do end up doing more books and they fail the condition of "have more stuff" in them I will be surprised in a disappointing way AGAIN by this game).

The Armour or Level to Defense Thing
Remains something I find especially offensive. The soldier talent that lets you wear armour and pick the best defense of two by FAR should be the default scenario just to prevent a horrible "look cool" tax.

But it has underlying issues with front loading the primary defense stat for basically one base class by a potentially huge margin and just plain does bad things to the game, and I cannot for the life of me think why they thought it was a good idea.

It remains possibly "prize for the most baffling deliberate mechanical decision". Though it has some hard competition from that ability that lets you cut limbs off people only if your attack would otherwise have killed them.

Don't balance abilities based on a shit tier standard
There are many take home lessons for how not to write an RPG in this book. Mostly we know them all too well already and knew them all too well already long before this book came out.

But the one that this book rams home again and again, selectable abilities need to be better. Tiny incremental conditional bonuses to boring vanilla actions are NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

The entire balance point for Talents and Feats in this game time and again is evident as being that of "Weapon Focus". A conditional +1 to the same boring attack you have always made and will always make.

Abilities NEED better meat to them than that, no one wants to eat the shit pie of Conditional Incremental Numeric Bonus, they don't want to eat it 10 times in a row to shit out a Conditional Noticeable Numeric Bonus. Your game should serve up other options, and ideally not serve up the shit pies.

All other flaws aside THIS remains this game's greatest and most unforgivable sin. And, I think possibly the sin most inherited by it's immediate successor 4E without any lessons having been learned. (well, pilot 4E edition stuff aside, they didn't really give saga enough time or attention for them to learn from it, they basically just threw it out there as a "trail for some 4E concepts" and declared victory without seeing if it sank or swam).

And while I'm sure I'm missing something I wanted in the conclusion I think the "the abilities are uninspiring shit" is a good point to end it on, because it really is this edition's greatest sin, and one for which I at least condemn it as utterly irretrievable dross.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Mon Nov 10, 2014 12:41 am, edited 4 times in total.
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Post by spongeknight »

DSMatticus wrote:What people have openly mocked is PL's claim that the following paragraph is an inviolate prohibition against having too many enemies in a single combat:
The book wrote:Multiple Opponents: Encounters with two to six opponents work best. Save the single-opponent encounter for higher-CL "bosses" like the rancor or Darth Vader. Avoid encounters with more than a dozen opponents unless you want the heroes to feel overwhelming.
There it is again. It is literally just a bunch of lies and a refusal to engage with the argument I am presenting. Anyone who wants to read the text, I have given it in full and PL admits right in this very post that this is the only relevant text. That text says, verbatim, "encounters with two to six opponents work best" and "avoid encounters with more than a dozen opponents unless you want the heroes to feel overwhelmed" (I made a typo the first time around and said overwhelming, oop).

I am pointing out the obvious: that "____ works best" and "don't do ____ unless ____" are not prohibitions, and that because PL is insisting they are prohibitions he is clearly wrong. Instead of engaging me on that disagreement (a doomed effort on his part because this is a matter of very simple language about which he is objectively wrong), he is accusing me of ignoring those sections as inconvenient even as I quote those sections at him as evidence that he is wrong. PL is not arguing in good faith, he is just pretending the things that are happening aren't and talking about a bunch of things that aren't happening but would make me look bad if they were.
Yeah, I'm siding with PL on this one. Saying that you shouldn't overwhelm players with huge amounts of characters because that is likely to kill them, and then simultaneously saying that evasion is necessary because huge amounts of mooks will kill you if you don't have evasion so evasion is necessary is just wrong. It's a circular argument starting with a false premise. If your GM doesn't toss lots of autohitting mooks at you, evasion is not worth anything. If your GM is throwing tons of autohitting mooks at you, he is specifically doing something the game rules warn him not to do. Your argument is literally "if the GM ignores the encounter building advice and does something that will probably kill you, then the one ability that counters that is important, therefore it is always important because all GMs will ignore the encounter building guidelines."

You might as well say that all character builds need to include buying a Star Destroyer because your GM throws a Star Destroyer at parties.
A Man In Black wrote:I do not want people to feel like they can never get rid of their Guisarme or else they can't cast Evard's Swarm Of Black Tentacleguisarmes.
Voss wrote:Which is pretty classic WW bullshit, really. Suck people in and then announce that everyone was a dogfucker all along.
DSMatticus
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Post by DSMatticus »

The dishonesty in PL's latest argument is somewhat subtle.

At the outset of this argument, PL adopted the position that "encounters with two to six opponents work best" and "avoid encounters with more than a dozen opponents unless you want the heroes to feel overwhelmed" were strict prohibitions against including more than 6 or 12 opponents in a single encounter. I rejected the notion that this part of the text constituted a prohibition because English does not work that way. "Tea is ideal" and "avoid coffee unless you're trying to stay awake" are not prohibitions against drinking coffee. Indeed, one of them explicitly describes a situation in which coffee is desirable.

PL is now claiming that because I reject his fallacious readings of the text, I must necessarily reject all of the text. It's a completely circular argument based on the notion that his flawed reading is exactly as privileged as the actual text in the book. Assume for a moment that those lines do not constitute a prohibition (but instead, a description of what happens when you stray from the 2-6 range). If this were the case, having a fight with 26 stormtroopers would not be ignoring any of the text, and PL would not be justified in throwing his bitchfit about inconsistency. PL is assuming that those lines of text mean exactly what he says they mean in order to claim that everyone who disagrees with him is picking and choosing what parts of the rules to apply and that therefore they are wrong to criticize him for his interpretation of the text.

It is simply a fact that the encounter CL formula produces concrete statements of difficulty and that the text PL is hanging on is nothing more than a wishy-washy suggestion that fights with lots of opponents "feel overwhelming." It says absolutely nothing about the level appropriateness of any encounters, nor does it forbid anything at all. But the guidelines do say that 26 stormtroopers are a CL 8 encounter while 26 star destroyers are a CL 173 encounter, and that actually fucking means something substantive.
SpongeKnight wrote:Saying that you shouldn't overwhelm players with huge amounts of characters because that is likely to kill them, and then simultaneously saying that evasion is necessary because huge amounts of mooks will kill you if you don't have evasion so evasion is necessary is just wrong. It's a circular argument starting with a false premise.
This may not be the stupidest thing said in this thread so far, but it is hands down the weirdest. Let's break down what you said:
1) The players should not be overwhelmed with a large number of mooks.
2) Large numbers of mooks are likely to kill players without evasion.
C) To avoid being killed by a large number of mooks, players should have evasion.

The first problem is that this argument is not circular. The conclusion does not feed back into the premises. But it is an invalid argument, because it begins by declaring that the player will not be fighting a large number of mooks and concludes that they need evasion to protect themself from a large number of mooks. That's obviously not true. You don't need anything to protect yourself from things you won't ever fight.

But the really weird part: that's not my argument! That's not even close! The first premise is one of PL's positions, you fucking idiot! You seriously smashed PL and I together into one hybrid-esque clusterfuck and concluded that it didn't make sense, then turned to me and asked "what's up with that, man?" What the fucking hell?

If you wanted something close to my argument, it would look like this:
1) A large number of mooks will be a level appropriate encounter (as per the formula in the book) for certain parties.
2) Large numbers of mooks are likely to kill players without evasion.
C) To avoid being killed by a large number of mooks, players should have evasion.

You will note that this argument is not circular, and it is valid. If 1 and 2 hold, then the conclusion must follow, and the conclusion does not in anyway imply the premises. But even that isn't really my argument, so much as a specialized case of my argument. But more on that coming up, because after that hilarious blunder you kept going.
SpongeKnight wrote:If your GM doesn't toss lots of autohitting mooks at you, evasion is not worth anything.
DSM wrote:If you are missing more than half the time you will on average deal less than half of your weapon's damage per attack. When you use autofire against an opponent without evasion, half of your weapon's damage is the per attack minimum. It follows that you should switch to autofire when you need an 11 or higher to hit your opponent. That happens to stormtroopers at reflex 15.

Let's pick the two classes PL has shit on the most: scouts and nobles. We're going to assume 16 dex.
Scouts: 10 base + 3 dex + 2 class + [level or armor, whichever is higher].
Nobles: 10 base + 3 dex + 1 class + [level or armor, whichever is higher].

You will note that simply plugging in a level of 1 yields a reflex score of 15 or higher. Out of the gate autofire is a better option against completely naked level 1's with even moderately high dex scores. And this is a system where defensive attributes go up higher than offensive attributes, so this situation gets worse and not better. Boba Fett is seriously expected to roll a 16 just to shoot himself in the face, but Boba Fett does not have evasion and does have a grenade launcher and a flamethrower. Unless there is a nearby sarlacc Boba Fett's best bet at suicide is setting himself on fire.
DSM wrote:Autofire and burstfire hit on the same rolls, so if X is the number of rolls they hit on it's
13.5*X+6.75*(20-X)
22.5*X

In this case autofire beats out burstfire when you need to roll 13 or higher than your opponent's reflex score to hit (X=8). For heavy stormtroopers that happens at either 15 or 18 depending on whether or not they had an opportunity to brace. Bracing is honestly pretty easy, which means that against naked level 1's they actually should use burstfire. But as you may have guessed, naked level 1's are not a particularly interesting example and slapping on light armor or just being level 4 changes the preferred option right back to autofire. Also, just forcing the stormtroopers to move each round (chase) will prevent them from bracing, so even that is not insurmountable.
DSM wrote:Dean picked 26 stormtroopers because that is the magic number to one round Darth Vader and that's an amusing and illustrative example of why mid- and high-level characters need evasion. Taking evasion bumps that number up to ~250. But even when the fight is just a few PC's shooting at a few dudes, having evasion is mathematically superior to not having evasion in almost all cases. It will reduce incoming damage by an amount proportional to how difficult you are to hit with a normal attack, and because PC's are usually quite difficult to hit that's a considerable gain in survivability.
That spoiler contains a giant wall of text that is me quoting myself. It's a bunch of math about how autofire improves the DPS of one dude shooting at another one dude, and how evasion reduces the DPS of that one dude shooting at that other one dude by drastically reducing the effectiveness of autofire.

Evasion means you take less damage from one stormtrooper, and because twenty-six stormtroopers is just one stormtrooper twenty-six times, it also means you take less damage from twenty-six stormtroopers. There is nothing magical about the number of stormtroopers. Having evasion makes you more likely to survive any fight with any number of stormtroopers. And because autofire attacks continue to be so prevalent, that remains true even as you move away from stormtroopers. You're basically claiming that "reducing the amount of damage you take during fights isn't worth anything."
SpongeKnight wrote:If your GM is throwing tons of autohitting mooks at you, he is specifically doing something the game rules warn him not to do.
What the book actually says (verbatim) is "avoid encounters with more than a dozen opponents unless you want the heroes to feel overwhelmed." It is almost impossible to make a sentence less imposing and authoritative than that. It has an "unless" clause baked in describing circumstances under which you might want to use more than a dozen opponents.
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momothefiddler
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Post by momothefiddler »

DSMatticus wrote:
Autofire wrote:Autofire is treated as an area attack (sea Area Attack, page 155). You target a 2-square-by-2-square area, make a single attack roll at a -5 penalty, and compare the result to the reflex defense of every creature in the area. Creatures you hit take full damage, and creatures you miss take half damage.
Burstfire wrote:The Burst Fire feat allows you to use a weapon set on autofire against a specific creature instead of an area. You take a -5 penalty on your attack roll but deal +2 dice of damage. ... This is not considered an area attack, so the damage cannot be reduced using the evasion talent (see below).
Below wrote:A character with the Evasion talent takes half damage from a successful autofire attack and no damage from an autofire attack that misses his reflex defense.
Evasion wrote:If you are hit by an area attack, you take half damage if the attack hit you. If the area attack misses you, you take no damage.
Note: I haven't read the text and don't intend to, so I'm going off what you quoted here.

That said, is your argument that Burstfire is totally just ranged power attack and it only references Autofire for teh lulz and is, in fact, completely unrelated? Because that's what I'm getting from you and it doesn't seem terribly likely.
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RadiantPhoenix
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Post by RadiantPhoenix »

spongeknight wrote:Yeah, I'm siding with PL on this one. Saying that you shouldn't overwhelm players with huge amounts of characters because that is likely to kill them
It doesn't say that: it says "[make] the heroes [...] feel overwhelming.", not "[make] the heroes [...] feel overwhelmed.", which means the game expects the party to wipe the floor with them.

EDIT: I missed the part where DSM said he made a typo.
Last edited by RadiantPhoenix on Sun Nov 09, 2014 5:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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momothefiddler
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Post by momothefiddler »

RadiantPhoenix wrote:
spongeknight wrote:Yeah, I'm siding with PL on this one. Saying that you shouldn't overwhelm players with huge amounts of characters because that is likely to kill them
It doesn't say that: it says "[make] the heroes [...] feel overwhelming.", not "[make] the heroes [...] feel overwhelmed.", which means the game expects the party to wipe the floor with them.
DSMatticus wrote:Anyone who wants to read the text, I have given it in full and PL admits right in this very post that this is the only relevant text. That text says, verbatim, "encounters with two to six opponents work best" and "avoid encounters with more than a dozen opponents unless you want the heroes to feel overwhelmed" (I made a typo the first time around and said overwhelming, oop).
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