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PhoneLobster
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Officer
I know I'm going into this one with optimistic dreams that it will take the Commander role from the starship roles and expand further on his unique ability to provide IT support to his ship's crew. But, I TOO CAN DREAM!

So, requirements are, seven levels behind you, training in the skill Knowledge(Sure TOTALLY burning a trained skill on TACTICS!), At least one Leadership OR commando talent. And while you COULD enter this with nothing but four Co-Ordinates under your belt (that's FOUR incremental bonuses to aiding another when THEY aid another!)... don't do that, take something from Commando, it's attached to Soldier instead of The Fucking Noble, and it has possibly some of the very best survivability talents in the game.

AND you need to be in a “Military or Paramilitary” organization. Which is basically “ask the GM real nice like”. And while you are at it it doesn't exclude you from just starting your own, so since you are begging the GM anyway, why not?

For that you get good BAB, a mediocre spread on the prestige class scale class defense bonuses, and the worst prestige class HP.

Your Shitty Incremental Talent You Lose Five Feats Over 10 Levels to gain? Command Cover
Yep, the exact same one Crime Lords get. Only YOU get to come in from Soldier and continue to have good BAB after you do. Yes it still caps out at +5 incrementally increasing by +1 every 2 levels, yes it requires adjacent allies, yes it encourages people to AoE you. No really, it is exactly the same class feature as the one on Crime Lord. BUT!!! Notably both of those ONLY count their OWN class level for their cap. So if you mix Officer and Crime Lord your class levels aren't going to directly stack for calculating your Command Cover CAP. And really we don't care because the ability is shocking.

WTF Is “Share Talent”?
Finally, Share Talent might just almost be the very best Talent in the game. Every second level you get to nominate ONE talent you already have, and you can then once per day only, and as a standard action on your part “impart the benefits” on an ally OR UP TO HALF YOUR CLASS LEVEL IN ALLIES (class level bitches, but still this ones actually maybe worth it) within 10 squares.

The ability gives no hard info on whether this “expends” the base talent for the officer in the case of limited use talents, there is a strong argument it doesn't and just passes the text to the beneficiaries who then expend limited use talents themselves.

Share Talent tries to restrict it's talents to things it thinks are weak sorta leadershippy things OK to pass around. Notably this includes the Influence tree, (the one which is all threats) thus making a whole “unique” "my minions intimidate people" thing crime lords do redundant and weak cheese if you want to use this on talents from that tree. BUT you don't use it on that tree, because they inexplicably included the Commando talent tree on the list.

And the command talent tree includes the strongest self healing actions in the game. And you can give them out to eventually 5 allies at once. The Officer yells at people to tell them how to be “Tough As Nails” for 25% of max HP healing per character per pop, OR gives out the “ignore the ENTIRE condition tree in one single go” talent to again, up to 5 characters per pop for the single biggest fuck you to the by now already sidelined condition track stacking builds in the game. The officer might just be the single greatest combat healer in the game by a potentially huge margin... except then it falls down because you can only take Tough As Nails once and can only select Shared Talent on it once. Damn. It's still arguably the most awesome thing this class does though and maybe the most awesome thing in prestige classes, nay classes in general so far. Which is marginally sad.

Of course you can also go with an all leadership noble who gets the “give my action to someone else” action, then give out the ability to give out your action to all your allies and have them all give their actions to like 1 guy, and you become like a giant cheerleading squad for the worlds single most hyperactive Jedi (just some steroided up jedi you bring along for the group to use as a puppet for what is eventually 5 extra actions a round). But as HILARIOUS as that is, it's STILL less efficient on how many 'roided up jedi actions it delivers than all the elaborate participants just coming in as 'roided up Jedi in the first place.

Military Tactics Talents
Assault Tactics – Move action to designate a target, DC 15 Knowledge(I had to take this shitty Tactics Skill To Get Into this class anyway) and all your allies get +1d6 damage on it. It's tagged as mind effecting so that it can be annoyingly negated, but it's anyone's guess WHO somehow negates it with mind effecting immunity, allies? The target? Who knows.
Deployment Tactics – Move action (this class wants you to stand still A LOT) for a DC 15 Knowledge(no really we are going to make forcing you to select Tactics pay off if it fucking kills you), to give out YOUR CHOICE of an incremental +1 attack OR +1 defense, but only against flanked targets OR against attacks of opportunity because oh boy the excitement of TWO narrow +1 bonuses WOULD BE TOO MUCH TO HANDLE. Bonus incrementally larger by +1 if you have similar incremental talents already. Which you don't because those ones are fucking traps.
Field Tactics – The designers really hate you moving and love tacking on Knowledge(Tactics) rolls. So they do it AGAIN. This also needs you to take Deployment Tactics first, which is a saddening development for all involved. This talent is poorly worded in the way it interacts with non-standard cover, but it does make standard cover into double the usual cover bonus, and then has a little sit down because it is dizzy with a poorly worded WTF moment with non standard cover sources. But fair is fair they would have had to look as far as THIS VERY FUCKING CLASS TO FIND A MANDATORY FREE LEVEL 1 CLASS FEATURE as an example of cover of less than the standard +5 bonus.
One For The Team – Ick, this title bodes poorly. OK this makes little sense. It's the Soldier talent to opt in to jump in front of attacks targeting adjacent allies. Only much later and it requires fucking Deployment tactics. At least it isn't a move action and a DC 15 Knowledge(Fucking Tactics) check. It pretends it's different by letting the ally do the same for you and letting you opt in for only half damage. But the original is cheaper thanks to not having the shitty Deployment Tactics requirement and if you MUST you can just Share Talent it instead if you want up to five people jumping in front of you anyway.
Outmanoeuvre – Hey this is different, a STANDARD action... and a DC 15 Knowledge (Fucking Tactics) check. This one requires Deployment tactics again (booh) and Field Tactics (not so bad but.... meh). So you are minimum level 12 when you get the earth shaking ability to negate a grab bag of shitty incremental enemy inspiring flavored bonuses, and also their dodge bonus which might occasionally matter. It's a crappy edge case ability made crapper by allowing enemy officers (little o, so I'm guessing its a fuzzy definition not requiring this actual class) can negate it by “opposing your Knowledge (Tactics) check. Laughably it forgets to tell you what they oppose it WITH other than that they are making a skill check. Personally I'd suggest opposing it with Use The Force because it is the one true skill to rule them all, but opposing it with Swim might be funnier.
Shit Defense 1 – No wait, SHIFT defense. 1. Oh crap incremental ability chain incoming. Swift action for -2 to one defense of your choice for a mere +1 to another. Holy crap don't do it bat man!
Shit Defense 2 – I'm sticking with the original typo on this. Now -5 to one for +2! Wait. Is this margin getting worse??
Shit Defense 3 - -5 to one defense for +5 to another. Oh gee only THREE TALENTS out of 5 ever from this class down the drain, levels 8 through 12 at the earliest. FOR THAT.
Tactical Edge – You can use all those move action and knowledge tactics abilities from this tree as swift actions, if you have them. And no one even bothered taking this even if they took the abilities in question.

Your Legacy Options Are...
Talents from Leadership (Noble Class) or Commando (Soldier Class). Commando is WAY better. No really.

What You Do With Officer -
You are a Soldier. You are an incredibly hardy soldier who's primary attribute is CONSTITUTION. You have a billion HP. You have three personal Second Wind's per day, and at least one use of “fuck the condition track fuck the WHOLE condition track”. You have the ability to share an extra second wind and the fuck the condition track ability with other people, maybe up to 5 of them, but the second wind only once, the other thing maybe 4 times per day with an argument about what a unique talent selection even is. But really at that point you probably share other things because how often per day does your WHOLE group need to ignore the WHOLE condition track?

So you probably take like 4 levels of this on top of a tough as nails soldier build, which does other stuff like fight effectively as it's day job and just does the shared healing thing as a hobby. But, for once, an actual rather notably hobby.

Oh and you probably don't take any other actual god damn talents from this class. Thems crazy talk.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Fri Nov 07, 2014 10:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Insomniac
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Post by Insomniac »

There aren't Wealth by level rules, a very big oversight. The wealth talent gives a tremendous amount of credits to buy the very best specced out equipment and starships. It is a huge game changer to walk to a part with 100+ thousand credits, most parties would be thrilled to have a Noble/Crime Lord with the Wealth Talent. The Wealth talent can also be plowed into very strong Droids that have Class Levels and can be tweaked to be combat and skill monsters. One common thing to get is Tech Specialist equipment with the wealth to be +2 to attack or +5 to damages and with some work arounds both, obviously worthy of two feats.

With a DC 25 persuasion check, Nobles can help get gear at 50 percent off and all sorts of black market stuff at cost instead of with restricted, military and illegal modifiers which jack the prices up considerably. Nobles can bring something close to 90 percent discounts on gear purchases.

Nobles also have strong Talents that compliment Force usage
One of there talents is that everything for a 2 to a 7 is considered an 8, which helps secure high DCs on Use the Force checks.

Later talents give multiple strong options in combat and out.
Other perks are the best class skills and the most skills.
Last edited by Insomniac on Fri Nov 07, 2014 10:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
PhoneLobster
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Sith Apprentice
It's basically Jedi Knight again, only EVIL!

But hey you only need seven levels behind you instead of +7 BAB, your required feats are basically “be a base jedi class level 1” and entry to the force tradition is easy enough as long as you aren't in the explicit and bullshit “only 2 evil magic guys in the universe” eras.

OR IS IT? Because you also need to max out your dark side score for entry into the class AND you explicitly get the infamous lose requirements FU of losing your prestige class abilities if you stop meeting this requirement. And while accruing dark side points is easy, lets take a moment to remember that when you max them out the GM has explicit permission to take your character away from you and indeed is pretty much encouraged to do so.

Oh and while you get the FU of losing class abilities on losing the dark side requirement, it takes the time out to ensure that jedi who “fall” KEEP theirs and that text for that appears within your class section just to taunt you.

For that you get good BAB, Medium HP (for a prestige class), and all round +2 class defense bonuses.

Your Shitty Incremental Talent You Lose Five Feats Over 10 Levels to gain?
Nah, you use the force, so it's selectable class abilities for you, Force Techniques AGAIN. You basically take the extra force points and maybe the force mastery AGAIN. Why aren't all the force technique classes one fucking class? Because they wanted to pad out and pretend they wrote more fucking classes than they did that is why.

Sith Talents
Dark Healing – Fore point to heal yourself with a vampiric attack on a creature nearby. Force Use attack vs Fort Defense (so basically a freebie) and 1d6 (per class level bitch) damage for flat out vampiric self healing. The force point cost makes this shitty, until you remember you are getting force techniques with nothing much to to blow them on except the free force points restored at the end of combat thing. So why not.
Dark Scourge - +1 attack bonus vs Jedi. Er... do you mean Jedi base class? Jedi Tradition? Guys with Jedi Prestige classes? Do we have a clear definition here? No, but did have time for a fluff sentence about boundless hate though. Thanks.
Dark Side Adept – Reroll any darkside force powers. Yeah dark side force powers are weird though some of them end up being talents like Dark Side healing and not qualifying. Also there aren't many of them so it's basically the same as taking the thing that rerolls just one force power. Also this is a keep it even if it is bad copy pasta reroll so we hate it.
Dark Side Master –Requires dark side adept, lets you keep the better reroll... for a force point! Holy crap this is bad. There are rerolls in the game that let you do that minus the force point already for just one talent. You can ALREADY just spend a force point to get your “Use Per Encounter” back for a force ability anyway WITHOUT blowing two talents on it, and presumably you don't use “reroll then keep regardless” if your first roll was good enough that you would blow a god damn force point to keep it!
Force Deception – Use The force instead of Deception. And yes, with the usually shitty wording that makes it a sorta reroll thing whether they meant to or not.
Improved Dark Healing – Doubles the range on Dark Healing and deals half damage/vampirism even on a miss. Notably not as an area attack , and it targets Fort so it will ignore Evasion, but also Deflect and indeed most things like that. Worth taking if you took Dark Healing, which you did since there is virtually no other reason to be in this god damn class.
Wicked Strike – Force point on hit with lightsaber for -2 steps on the condition track. You know I've been complaining about condition track builds being poor, but this is one of those talents that MIGHT manage to push you over the edge for dealing the condition track in one turn before opponents can just start recovering and screwing your strategy over. And again, the force point cost is subverted somewhat by the fact that as a Force Tradition class you may have a pile of force points recovered per combat/encounter. But Dark Healing is probably better and more general purpose.

Your Legacy Options Are...
Armour Specialist, because hey, why not waste one of your 5 talents ever on that one? Or Duelist (remember the talent tree from Jedi Knight that seemed to exist only to segregate the most shitty and boring of it's talents into? Yes that one), and Light Saber Combat from Jedi.

What You Do With Sith Apprentice
You get the usual force traditions for the force points. You then either blow them on a rather nice vampiric attack or whatever else you might already be doing that uses them, like enhancing force powers in various ways. At a stretch this class has one of those talents that pushes you over the edge from “useless” to “one hit KO” as a Condition track build, it comes in a bit late, but if you were a light sabering condition track build you were at least being marginally effective as a flat out melee monkey until then anyway.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Insomniac wrote:There aren't Wealth by level rules, a very big oversight.
But there ARE rules for the rate at which you earn wealth from encounters/adventures. No really. I found them, did you even know they exist?
The wealth talent gives a tremendous amount of credits
It does, IF you blow permanent character abilities on it and then follow bad levels with good by investing in noble class levels repeatedly. That is not a good mechanic that sort of exchange of personal power for wealth power is NOT GOOD FOR RPGs. How many times does that need underlining?
to buy the very best specced out equipment and starships. It is a huge game changer
Have you not been reading this stuff or what? Starships? Sure now you can afford them, eventually, sort of. But... are you allowed to use them? What about the CL issues? We don't know. Do you even WANT to use them? Considering the incredibly shitty insane vehicle rules?

And, spoiler here, remember how I've already looked ahead to Starships of the galaxy. One of the things it does is notice star ship prices are kinda high considering it has 'be a pilot" being a thing from level 1. So it flat out tells GMs to give out free starships to players.
Noble/Crime Lord with the Wealth Talent.
Crime Lord levels are not part of a Wealth talent exploiting build. It's straight up Noble or you are losing credits.
The Wealth talent can also be plowed into very strong Droids that have Class Levels and can be tweaked to be combat and skill monsters.
Who lose HP, BAB and at least one Talent on Noble. So less strong than the same thing that DIDN'T literally sell a portion of their combat abilities for money.
With a DC 25 persuasion check, Nobles can help get gear at 50 percent off and all sorts of black market stuff at cost instead of with restricted, military and illegal modifiers which jack the prices up considerably.
And the ability for THAT is written in with a fucking "total item cost 1000xCharacter level limit". That is a huge limitation because for instance mere Storm Trooper armour isn't actually effected by that ability until a MINIMUM of level 8, and depending on what the fuck "total item cost" means and when you factor in the black market/liscence fee/rare fee on that for the check from the talent... actually it is maybe level 9, 16, 19, or well over 20 before it works on just storm trooper armour.

Storm trooper armour pretty much stops being worth wearing around level 6-7 for most characters. Yes that is BEFORE the EARLIEST level before noble Connections actually effect the purchase of (even, and only, one suit of) Storm Trooper Armour assuming you can even figure out how to adjudicate it's total cost cap.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Fri Nov 07, 2014 10:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Insomniac »

Armor isn't even what most people would buy with the Wealth because out of very specific situations, the majority of characters loses defenses by buying armor. Which is one of the criticisms of the game that people have.

I did realize that going into Crime Lord would lower further wealth gains.

Say you want to do a spaceship campaign. Level 5.
Wealth guidelines for that are Level Times Level minus 1 times 2000.
5 times 4 times 2000=40,000
But a Wealth character brings almost 3 times as much wealth to the table. That is the difference between Used and New and all sorts of other ship modifications. It is worth it. I have taken this Talent, I have seen it taken, it is one of the better talents to take, certainly worth more than +1 to an attack or something.

The given ship would be a crummy one compared to the top of the line one the Noble could buy.

You are underestimated Droids and the tinkering that can be done to them by reprogramming Feats and Talents.
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Post by DSMatticus »

PL wrote:It does, IF you blow permanent character abilities on it and then follow bad levels with good by investing in noble class levels repeatedly. That is not a good mechanic that sort of exchange of personal power for wealth power is NOT GOOD FOR RPGs. How many times does that need underlining?
Goalposts moved.

Insomniac told you that you have no idea what you've been talking about because you've been shitting on noble this entire time and it is actually a viable selection. Now that the reasons it is a viable selection are being dropped in your lap, you cannot then start shouting "okay it's powerful but it shouldn't be!"
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Post by RadiantPhoenix »

Howsabout I, or someone else, start a thread for people to post complete SAGA characters so we can have solid things to compare?
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Insomniac wrote:Armor isn't even what most people would buy with the Wealth because out of very specific situations, the majority of characters loses defenses by buying armor. Which is one of the criticisms of the game that people have.
So... you aren't actually getting the point that it simply a common, fairly minor basic item example that kinda demonstrates that the value cap on that ability renders it next to worthless. You sure as hell aren't buying actual major expensive things using that ability, pretty much ever. If you are LUCKY there will be a point in the game where you use it to get marginal discounts on god damn heavy blaster pistols and items in that order.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

DSMatticus wrote:Goalposts moved.
... or not because that's basically what I have been saying about the wealth Talent all along?

Do you even know what Goalpost moving is? Are you intent on simply accusing me of everything under the sun without any basis in fact whatsoever forever?

Is that your thing now?

It's looking like that is your thing now.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Fri Nov 07, 2014 11:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by fbmf »

RadiantPhoenix wrote:Howsabout I, or someone else, start a thread for people to post complete SAGA characters so we can have solid things to compare?
What I don't get is people complaining that PL is being disingenuous, but you won't quote the rule book at him.

If you guys are using "accepted practice" or "common house rules" that's all well and good ( I do it, too. ) but then PL is correct that the SAGA RAW is shit and you guys are doing the thing Silva does where he says, " yeah, the rules say that but at the table nobody actually does that, so the game is just fine."

If you guys are using errata or obscure FAQ rulings( dunno if such a thing exists) then quote them.

If PL is outright lying about what the rules say, quote the rule book to prove he is wrong.

This is very un-Den of y'all.

Game On,
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Sith Lord
Force Adept and Jedi Knight couldn't manage to finish their own progressions without bringing in a second five level class and the same now goes for the Sith Lord.

So, minimum 12 levels behind you. The usual “You took jedi as your first level right?” skill, feat and proficiency requirements. The usual “you took one of the almost generic “force technique” classes that probably should have been rolled into one right?” have a force technique requirement. And the same incredibly shitty Dark Side Score requirement from Sith Apprentice that lets the GM tear up your character sheet for being too evil.

Oh and be in the Sith tradition. Challenging only in the eras with the retarded “only 2 evil magic guys” requirement... and in fact sorta weird on this one because this is basically “be the boss evil guy” class and you need some sort of organizational permission in a situation where sometimes you can only even BE the boss evil guy if there basically are no peers or indeed any fucking organization to give you permission anymore.

For that you get the medium good HP for a prestige class, the “better” prestige class +3 all round class defenses, and good BAB.

Your Awesome New Talents
Ahahahahaha, this is one of those tacked on late game classes no one is really meant to take, so no, no new talents, go home.

Your Legacy Talents?
Sith Talent Tree (you took the good ones already if you were a sith apprentice)... and force talents, yes, AGAIN this class pretends being able to take Force Talents is a class feature instead of a standard thing.

Force Secrets
The same force secrets all the OTHER force secret classes get. You know, these ALL should just be the same damned “advanced force user” class right?

These remain sorta bad, and make you feel extra bad because one of your main sith things is the vampiric life drain “power” from Sith Apprentice that is actually a talent so your stupid god damned Force Secrets CANNOT enhance it in the way they probably should.

Fearless
You get the same less good mental immunity that Jedi Masters get instead of the other one that Force Disciples get.

Temptation ?
Hey look ONE unique class ability? At level 1 you say? The Force Disciple gets mental immunity AND crazy prophetic dreams, what do YOU do... hm Standard Action, Persuasion (probably subbed with Force Use) Attack vs Will, one target only, then IF the target spends a force point by the next turn they take 1 Darkside point OR they take -1 condition track. AND if they spend an (optional rule) Destiny Point then it's DOUBLE that! ...OK.... IT'S A TRAP! Only this one you HAVE to take so... aw... sad pandas...

What You Do With Sith Lord?
Are you meant to take this for the +3 all round class defense bonus? Because that's all I'm seeing, temptation is spectacularly crap, force secrets are crap AND available on (marginally) better classes, and if you wanted sith Talents then you were a Sith Apprentice countless levels ago.

And you know, why the fuck isn't Sith Lord, Force Disciple and Jedi Master ONE fucking class already? They perform basically the same roles in relation to Force Adept, Sith Apprentice and Jedi Knight that ALSO should all be the same classes already. Hell for that matter why aren't all six fucking classes just one damned class. DOUBLE hell why aren't they just the back end of the Jedi base class?

Why? Pretend extra class options. That are all pretty much the same. To the point of having actually exactly the same talent technique secret I-don't-even-care-anymore lists.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Lets Go Back to Chapter IV: Skills
Removing Ranks, Replacing them with Crazy
THE big “advance” of this system was chucking out skill ranks. Which were fiddly and accounting bullshit and unbalanced especially if they actually mattered for opposed important checks in combat.

SO. Ranks are gone, but your skill bonus still includes incremental half your character level as a bonus (so still fiddly accounting).

And now being “Trained” in a skill front loads +5 bonus at level 1. And gaining Skill Focus as a feat (available at level 1) front loads another +5. This is essentially the missing fudged +10ish from the original ranks system and fairly clearly an attempt by the designers to basically obfuscate the fact they (thought) they were using pretty much the same fucking numbers give or take 3 points.

Unfortunately the numbers are now front loaded by 10 points. So there are some serious level 1 issues.

Worse when it comes to being unbalanced when opposed checks start to matter? THIS system lets you use Skill checks as substitution for an attack OR even as substitution for your defense! Now lets just remember you can go into the game at level one with maybe average (favorable) bonuses for about +4 attack, and maybe about 14 defense, OR you can choose to go in with a Use The Force BONUS of +12 (with just the same relatively average bonuses). And that +12 can be your attack bonus instead, or it can be added to a 1d20 and be your defense instead. Or at a stretch with a human jedi, BOTH at level 1.

Oh, and then your Initiative bonus is also a skill now so there is that too.

Gaining Trained Skills, Level 1, your god damn feats, your god damn attribute advancement or GTFO
You get trained skills at level 1 based on class and Int modifier. You get them off your starting Class Skills list.

After that the game basically doesn't want you to train a skill ever again.

Taking a new class with more trained skills ONLY increases you Class Skill LIST, you gain NO trained skills for it. Anything other than base classes doesn't even do that as they don't even HAVE class skill lists on prestige classes.

Gaining permanent Int bonus gets you more skills, but Intelligence is otherwise the biggest fucking dump stat in the god damn game. So investing in it is deeply costly.

Aside from that 1 trained skill is 1 feat. If it's something you for some reason care about the +5 bonus is certainly large, but it's a sad state when you give up your feats for mere numeric bonuses to skill checks. I mean you COULD be spending that same 1 feat on 1-3 uses of Force Lighting per encounter or something actually remotely fun. But I suppose you COULD also be spending it on Weapon Focus, and the game fucking wants you to do that big time, so at least it's better than that. Sort of.

And yeah, Skill Focus is also another feat, on those occasions you care about a skill (Use The Force, Initiative, maybe Perception), you take it because it's big.

Making skill training cost feats or your ability increases like this makes gaining new skills incredibly costly and punitive. I could see the odd character (most probably a Jedi) investing an 11 or 13 in int and blowing one ability increase on it at level 4 for an extra skill or two.

But as a general rule, if you don't know a skill at level one you will basically NEVER know that skill, and you will have basically the exact same selection of skills available to you for your ENTIRE career. And that's bad.

The game itself basically doesn't even expect you to pick up new skills later on, as evident by the lack of class skill lists on prestige classes.

Also it makes getting into force using stuff very costly if you don't START the game at level 1 as a Jedi base class.

Passing Notes from Skill Description Stuff
Acrobatics
While it's the same familiar marginally useful skill you'd want to have on any adventurer if you can... with the cost of skills in this system you might see yourself not bothering with it.

Deception
Is bluff, disguise and forgery, bluffing is quicker than ever action wise, but now it's opposed by Perception which is also used for everything, so expect non-chump opponents to be trained if not focused.

Notably you have feint (inexplicably opposed by Initiative) which could be a delivery mechanism for sneak attacks... but one costly in actions, risk and rolls. Which inexplicably takes a -5 penalty against non-humanoid targets (because you can't feint at a dog!) and doesn't work on truly mindless targets because???

Also there is a Creating A Diversion to hide action, that is potentially a vehicle for permitting you to use your hide skill that then might be a vehicle for permitting you to use your sneak dice. Though why the hell you would do that and take the additional step of complexity risk and action cost I have no idea considering if you have this skill you don't even need the stealth skill and you can try and use this on it's own to more directly and cheaply provide a delivery mechanism for sneak dice with the already too costly Feint.

Endurance
Sure has a lot of text and complexity for something no one would every want. I guess you take this to avoid the really shit skills if you are stuck being a scout or something. Or as a prerequisite for some stuff you actually want.

Initiative – Yes, it is worth mentioning AGAIN, and forever, Initiative is a skill now. Yes if you really cared about initiative you could have +10 at level one with skill focus and training. And yes EVERYONE has Initiative on their class skill lists. But remember, flat footed rules have changed and JUST getting the initiative drop on someone no longer lets you treat them as flat footed until they act. So don't imagine you've found your potential sneak attack delivery mechanism on a nice simple option with other side benefits like I did briefly. It will just lead to disappointment, then something, then something, then the dark side. Oh. And apparently you can take 10 on Initiative. SOMEHOW. No mentions how, but not 20, because.. you know still no details you figure it out.

Jump And Climb
Couldn't be part of acrobatics or the three combined might actually have been worth taking in the high cost for skill training environment this game fosters.

Gather Information and Knowledge
Remain conceptually terrible skills at almost every level. Bringing along a character with these skills is either a mandatory boring tax, or outright a self nerf to the party that should be avoided. Trivia skills, especially in a “high adventure” setting/game are A TRAP. Notably about the only named category of Knowledge that ever has mechanical benefits is Knowledge(Tactics) and it's still shit, if not worse being largely an incredibly annoying skill tax for some of the games most annoying class features.

Mechanics
Has seen some fairly significant messing about as it has in every incarnation of this the d20 modern and d20 star wars franchises. It also replaces Disable Device and whatever your least favorite explosives handling skill is.

It also replaces whichever incarnation of repair you hate the most, but repairing things is still really time costly Also the repair bit is horridly worded and has a section on repairing “objects or droids” that tells you the costs of the check but not the benefits, then a section on droids and a section on objects that tell you the benefits (and the poorly conceived high but flat DC) BUT ALSO WASTE TIME REPEATING THE FUCKING COSTS.

Mechanics also has the Regular Power and Recharge Shields starship combat actions under it's belt. These actions are boring as dirt but highly beneficial to have... so you WANT two guys on your ship dedicated to being Mechanics monkeys... but you can totally buy Astromech droids to do that. And you should.

Mechanics has the odd written in 'Fuck You” of being the ONLY pure “Trained Only” skill in the list. And yes that INCLUDES “Use The Force”, yes I AM aware that they fucking shouted out that Use The Force was totally a “Trained Only” skill elsewhere, including at the front of the skill chapter in the “Untrained Checks” section, where they tell you that skills you cannot use untrained (like the specific given example of Use The Force) will have “No” checked in their “Untrained” column on the skills table, but then you get to the skills table and fuck it, Use the Force has a fucking “Yes”.

I'm guessing that at the last minute the writers on mechanics were like “oh crap, this skill is still deeply unattractive to real people and even with the starship stuff people will just yell “not it” until some untrained chump takes a shot at being the boring shield booster guy”... “I know... they HAVE to be trained!”. Similarly the same writers at the last minute said “Use The Force. The swiss army knife of skills, this needs to be BETTER! Lets make much of it usable untrained!” well, that or “lets all get drunk before we finish off the skills chapter”

So yeah you cannot do ANYTHING in the mechanics skill without being trained. But you STILL just buy a fucking NPC service droid to deal with it. Because no PC should be relegated to being a mindless shield booster/damage track ignorer in starship combat and Mechanics is otherwise a pure trap skill.

Perception
Is your go to notice anything skill. It opposes Persuasion, Deception and Stealth. There is little more to add other than it is on every class skill list, it is quite valuable, at least one if not more party members should totally be trained in it if not focused, many opponents will be too, and oh yeah the system is also packed with god damned Perception rerolls.

This is mostly just important to note so that you realise just how much this system hates stealth.

Persuasion
Is diplomacy, haggling and intimidation.

The diplomacy side of things is significantly weaker since 3.x or D20modern in the respect that you aren't going to ever shift the attitude of a target by more than 1 step and you can only try it once an encounter per target. Which actually makes it not just “not a diplomancer” but also “kinda fucking worthless” since you need to go 2 steps just to move from hostile to “PROBABLY won't attack you! Trust me!”

Haggling, an ability you can waste talents on without any other benefits might I add, might look nice with it's potential for 50% discounts and increased income and such. But has the rather odd and broken proviso that a creature will NEVER pay more for an item it can easily obtain elsewhere for the standard price. Meaning haggling is stupidly reduced to only half it's usefulness as outside of very rare items you are only actually allowed to use it when buying and not when selling.

Intimidate is probably the only option retaining usefulness, and the potential to earn you dark side points (and free items, screw you haggle). But IT has the odd proviso of only effecting a single target, even talent enhanced uses of the skill apparently incapable of calling for the entire over-run enemy in a combat to consider surrender, just one guy at a time. Oh, and even when you make him surrender, save his life, treat him well, the moment you let him go he is going to hate you more than ever before, apparently.

Pilot
Is just a skill tax for flying starships and using the more interesting options from the starship combat rules. It is however a pity those more interesting options were frequently written by some sort of type writer monkey and frequently make little to no fucking sense.

Ride
Space horses only, not space motorbikes. And just short of anyone interested in this skill took Pilot instead. Stupidly enough if you DID care about riding battle beasts you don't really NEED this skill to do that, you mostly only need this skill to ride random UNTRAINED beasts. At which point we need to wheel Admiral Ackbar in on his god damned fish wheel chair to tell us all about this skill.

Stealth
It's hide, it's move silently, it's concealing an item, it's sleight of hand, it's picking pockets, and it's kinda crap. EVERYONE has god damned perception, perception rerolls are everywhere, and you may NOT hide while observed unless you also use a Diversion and that requires another skill investment and the risks of MORE rolls against the Perception everyone has and TWO chances for all the guys with rerolls on perception to reroll it against you. AND you can ONLY use the Diversion once pre day per target! No really!

At least it gives you a snipe option for hiding again while shooting, but the penalty is large and with perception checks/rerolls as noted repeatedly... probably enough to push you over. Still. Sniping is probably the only real option if you DO attempt to use Stealth at the core of your build, so, apparently, screw you guys, melee hiding assassins!

Survival
The only thing you might want training in this for is tracking. And you don't need it.

Treat Injury
What? You expected it to be good? If you need it get a cheap trashy NPC droid to do it. You don't need to though.

Use Computer
May have seen some reforms. It's now diplomacy, (for computers), gather information (on computers), and some other junk.

Astrogation is trained only. Unless you have an astrogation computer. In which case it isn't. And THAT is a skill tax to travel between adventures that no one asked for.

The diplomacy (vs computers) option isn't as bad as default because you get to keep doing it, but it takes forever. You have to have a “friendly” or better computer before it lets you use attached printers to print your documents on. Printing your documents is one of the awesome powers computer use explicitly calls out as one of the things it can do. It doesn't get much better than that.

You can also rewrite droid characters with this skill. And do so with relatively negligible difficulty. That's pretty much the only reason to take it. And you can probably just buy a droid to rewrite your droids for you anyway.

Use The Force
Doesn't require training for half it's abilities, but DOES require Force Sensitivity, which is basically the “I'm a major character” feat, and the entry feat into force stuff you very possibly should be entering into, also it's free with being a jedi along with ACTUAL training in the damned skill.

But despite that, any untrained sucker labelled as “Sensitive” can (try to) communicate Telepathically over vast distances, Sense surroundings ignoring various obstacles, and “Search Your Feelings”.

Yes. “Search Your Feelings” is an action only the force sensitive can use. It's another “predict the future” thing and you basically spend a full round action and DC15 check to ask the GM “This action... Hot or Cold?”” and the GM says “Hot” or “Not Hot”. But the prediction is limited to only 10 minutes into the future for consequences of your action. And the example text is basically specific encouragement to shaft people who actually use this power over by just making sure the evil Sith assassins who try to kill them as a consequence of the tested action do so AFTER the ten minute “is it safe to do this?” window.

Trained charactes use the skill for their force powers (if they have them), and presumably to replace just about every other skill in the game one by one if they actually take all the “Use the Force instead of skill X” talents.

But they can also use it for some light small object telekinesis, but it isn't all that good at retrieving tossed light sabers unless you only toss them a VERY short distance.

You can use Sense Force to detect dark side stuff, other force stuff, and stuff to do with your allies that the average modern smart phone would generally make redundant.

And you can use “Force Trance” to heal fast. But still in solid out of combat time frames. Which basically just makes it a big arbitrary fuck you to non-force characters any time the GM actually lets it make a difference.
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Post by RadiantPhoenix »

Here's the thread I talked about starting: http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=55719
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Post by Insomniac »

Mechanics is not a pure trap skill! What are you talking about? It is a skill of paramount importance in the game and covers so many important things. Droid repair, shield repair in starship combats (You do NOT want to get caught without a shield in these starship fights!), it can substitute for slicing, it can be used to create incredibly potent explosives, it works on the Tech Specialist feat line which is amazing in the game, it covers something like 20+ different game applications as the skill was broadened in other books, etc. Madness, total madness, to call this a trap skill.

Only someone who has never played the game would call that a trap skill and oh wait, you haven't.

Edit: You neglected to mention that Use the Force is tremendous for tracking/outdoors people. Sense Surroundings ignores cover for Perception checks, even Total Cover. Perfect for a scout. Force Trance is a DC 10 check to go 10 times as long without food and water and you can remain in Force Trance to heal a number of HP equal to your character level PER HOUR without any other negative mechanical impact on your character. It is a huge skill. That is just the core stuff, it is later expanded in utility as a skill.
Last edited by Insomniac on Sat Nov 08, 2014 1:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Insomniac wrote:Mechanics is not a pure trap skill! What are you talking about? It is a skill of paramount importance in the game and covers so many important things. Droid repair, shield repair in starship combats...
I ... feel like you aren't doing your do diligence on your criticisms...
Me on the Skills Chapter just now wrote:Mechanics also has the Regular Power and Recharge Shields starship combat actions under it's belt. These actions are boring as dirt but highly beneficial to have... so you WANT two guys on your ship dedicated to being Mechanics monkeys... but you can totally buy Astromech droids to do that. And you should.
Interesting note, I made a typo on the naming of Regulate power. One of the TWO things you really want mechanics (on droid NPCs) in starship combat for.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Sat Nov 08, 2014 1:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by DSMatticus »

fbmf wrote:
RadiantPhoenix wrote:Howsabout I, or someone else, start a thread for people to post complete SAGA characters so we can have solid things to compare?
What I don't get is people complaining that PL is being disingenuous, but you won't quote the rule book at him.

If you guys are using "accepted practice" or "common house rules" that's all well and good ( I do it, too. ) but then PL is correct that the SAGA RAW is shit and you guys are doing the thing Silva does where he says, " yeah, the rules say that but at the table nobody actually does that, so the game is just fine."

If you guys are using errata or obscure FAQ rulings( dunno if such a thing exists) then quote them.

If PL is outright lying about what the rules say, quote the rule book to prove he is wrong.

This is very un-Den of y'all.

Game On,
fbmf
That's what people are doing. Seriously. PL said evasion was worthless, and the rebuttal was "here are rules, equipment, attacks, and characters from the book; you are wrong."

PL has been shitting on nobles the entire time and the response was "here is the wealth you would be expected to have without noble. Here is what taking wealth does to that number."

Even the text PL quotes doesn't fucking agree with him because he has described encounter building guidelines as inviolate prohibitions on rolling initiative for too many enemies at once.

What, exactly, is your standard for evidence? Page citations? Screenshots/scans? Sworn affidavits from the writers as to the accuracy of the contents? Look: people on both sides are making claims about the physical contents of the book and the factual accuracy of those claims is not being contested because nobody is lying about what the book physically says. Dean didn't pull those damage numbers or statblocks out of his ass, and nobody is accusing him of doing so.

But we are arguing about the ramifications of those texts and numbers, with Dean declaring that because evasion mitigates an incredibly prevalent source of damage it is an important defensive talent and PL saying "nuh-uh because level 2 stormtroopers do more damage against the level 2 characters they are sufficiently likely to hit using direct attack options instead."
PL wrote:
Noble is good trust me blah blah WEALTH!
Your noble defense is especially inadequate what with it being "nuh uh, the talents you described are just like that only they are totally good in ways!" and seriously WEALTH, the class level dependent ability to cash in permanent character class ability for fucking CASH that is your go to ability there? THAT is a good thing about noble or this game? What the fuck is wrong with you?
PL, here is you sarcastically mocking the notion that noble is good, then whining about how paying character resources for character power in the form of wealth is bad design.

Noble is a powerful class because it brings moar gear to the table and you hate noble because you think spending character resources on gear (Shadowrun chargen must piss you off immensely) is bad design. But because you a rampant hatebeast you cannot keep that shit compartmentalized and will shit on the idea that noble is a good class then retreat to claiming it's a poorly-designed class when called out. Because, again, rampant hatebeast.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Oh God now it's Feats
Lets try and take the easy way out on feats. Give or take a few bits and pieces they are, pretty much, the D20Modern feats. Which is to say they are your fairly standard feats from 3.x edition, but with the “cream of the crop” of incremental shitty bonus feat trees and some changes to turn things into shittier more generic incremental bonus feat trees.

THE feat that sets the STANDARD for feats, and indeed talents to some extent, in this game is “Weapon Focus” (weapon specialization seems to have morphed into a talent, but it's probably the other standard).

So lets try and just hit the highlights.

Feats for Skill Points
Yes we just did skills, but in case you missed it, if you don't train your skills at level one or dump points into the Intelligence dump stat the only way you get training or focus in skills is by blowing your feats on it. This sucks so much it needed mentioning AGAIN.

Proficiency Feats
If you were not a level 1 soldier or a level 1 jedi you will VERY LIKELY be blowing feats on mere weapon proficiencies and maybe armour proficiencies. Potentially even a lot of feats. Stupidly enough the very best levels to blow your limited budget of feats on armour proficiencies are the lowly levels where they can keep you several levels ahead of where you should be for reflex defense thanks to the monumentally stupid “level OR Armour bonus” thing, but if you do that you just blew your entire non-bonus feat budget for 6 levels on it. Or you were a soldier and you laugh at the newbs who want to wear armour without being a level 1 soldier and you entered the game at level 1, spent ONE feat on heavy armour proficiency and walked into the game with a Reflex defence bonus normally reserved for a FUCKING LEVEL 10 CHARACTER, well, as soon as you can afford or loot heavy armour, which is soon, soon enough to make the level 10 sized bonus ridiculous, but sadly not level 1, you'll still be many levels ahead in the mean time though.

Multi-Attack Feats
Another repeat of previous material now from the Combat rules, default multiple attacks are out. You now pay for the mere option to do them with feats. POORLY WRITTEN ONES, that apply giant penalties to attack, so you ALSO pay for them by collecting all the fucking incremental attack bonuses from all the variations of Weapon Focus AND by taking the most relevant fucking Multi-Attack Proficiency Talent up to FIVE incremental fucking times. Thus ultimately paying incrementally with all your talents, all your feats, anything interesting you might ever have done instead and your eternal soul.

Dual Master 1,2 and yes, 3
Incrementally eliminate dual wielding penalties with a bullshit incremental feat tree with fuck you BAB and Dex requirements. Because that's fun, especially on the back of all the fucking multi-attack feats and talents for the “vanilla attack multiple times” guy.

Extra Rage
Yes the wookie gets to have one extra rage per day at the cost of a feat. Yes that is kinda costly. Considering a Jedi gets Wis Bonus uses per combat of force powers for one feat 1 per day rage for a feat is a bit of a fuck you to non-jedi wookies, but wookie rage is kinda OK so maybe... maybe...

Coordinated Attack
In a continuation of this rule set's absolute insistence that “aid another” is a totally fucking awesome and legitimate thing that players not only should want to do but also should build their fucking characters around THIS feat has the audacity to say “not only will you want to burn YOUR action to let someone else get a bonus on THEIR action, NOW you can do it automatically without a roll? Does THAT sound like more fun! Saga edition thinks so! A whole feat cost worth of fun!” (also requires BAB +2 because fuck if the fucking nobles got THIS before level 3 the universe would end or something). This feat becomes especially insulting when you realize the roll it is replacing is a god damned attack roll against a flat defence of god damn 10, on a character with already a minimum BAB of +2...

Power Attack, Rapid Strike and Rapid Shot
We all know of the awesome weirdness that is Power Attack, and the way they keep fucking changing it with regards to two handed weapons and such. THIS edition is the 1 for 1 trade, not exceeding your BAB, only if using a weapon 2 handed it is a 1 for 2 trade. It requires Strength 13 (and won't do anything until you have BAB +1 so fuck you over eager Fucking Nobles with Str 13 of all things for some inexplicable reason trying to power attacking at level 1! You CAN have the feat, it just doesn't do anything yet.)

To complicate matters the system ALSO provides Rapid Shot, that lets you take a penalty to attack for a damage bonus, and Rapid Strike which does the same thing only it will overlap with Power Attack on the attacks it applies to.

Oddly enough Rapid shot requires 13 Str Just like the functionally similar Power Attack, while Rapid Strike requires 13 DEX instead despite the fact IT is the one that applies to actual melee, so really it's just a tiny bit of a MAD fuck you for no reason, more to shooters than anything else. Both require BAB +1.

They don't work exactly like Power Attack, they are flat one time -2 penalties to make what it calls “an extra attack” for +1 dice of damage.

Now the damage will vary somewhat based on the weapon for between +1.5 average damage and +5.5 average damage, but lets face it, if you took this feat you were a Jedi and it's +4.5 average damage with a light saber. The bonus is comparable for a two handed power attacking at -2 jedi (who gets +4 damage) or a fair sized bonus (of a whopping incremental +2.5) for a dual wielding jedi who gets +4.5 to each of two hands of weapons instead of the +2 for a -2 power attack penalty.

Not that a dual wield character takes this ability short of level a hell of a lot (minimum level 11, probably 12 for Dual Weapon Mastery fucking 3) since they have a stupid number of penalty reducing incremental garbage feats and talents to take before they get back to the same starting point as a 2handed user and start actually considering taking further penalties other than the ones they have to apply just to BE a dual weapon character.

So really you just use it as an EXTRA bit of power attack on 2handed weapon power attackers to push the whole power attack mess to further extremes since this penalty for bonus can be added on after you have already blown your whole BAB on power attack. And since the weapons with the biggest damage dice are two handed weapons. Well...

Oh, and of course one of these lets you pull minor power attack shenanigans with ranged attacks too, because yeah, we needed that, apparently.

And on this one, lets also note that yes the game, as one of it's fucking selling points no less, claimed it was “simplifying” the “boring” multiple attack fighter “thing” then turned around and gave us Dual Mastery 1 thu 3, double attack, tripple attack AND now Rapid Shot and Rapid Strike ALL as different boring multiple attack mechanics.

Mighty Swing
Of course, fuck all that because what your two handed weapon melee jedi/soldier REALLY does is take the Mighty Swing feat which does the same thing as Rapid Strike, specifically does not stack with Rapid strike, is available without a BAB requirement, only requires 13 Str instead of Dex (so less minor MAD fuck yous to deal with), and provides it's bonus for 2 swift actions (or in otherwords “fuck you this game hates dynamic movement in combat”) instead of any attack penalty at all.

And THEN maybe you think about power attack on top of your essentially free mighty swing damage bonus.

Extra Second Wind
Seemed like a pretty awesome feat, but now I note that it requires fucking Endurance skill training. Which means that it now has a noticeably bullshit fuck you pre-requisite. Also that means there is now ONE really good reason to take the FUCKING Endurance skill. (but really, fuck that skill).

Charging Shot
You may charge as normal, but instead get a Ranged attack at the end instead of a Melee attack. Sensibly you would charge AWAY from your target, and yes, this has a giant fuck you -4 to attack but if it's move and shoot backwards you might. But notably it's straight line only and no obstacles or obstructions, even minor ones, so you aren't getting into cover and shooting with this one and the penalty likely isn't worth the range increment unless you've just prevented a melee only attacker from reaching you at all.

So HEY take Charging shot for large penalties and a tiny bit more movement than just move and shoot so you can maybe in some edge cases completely fuck over a melee only opponent for one turn then probably fucking miss them anyway because of the penalties.

Still congratulations to the rules writers for not wording charge with “towards your enemy” or “ending in melee range of your target” because considering prior standards that was what I was pretty much expecting at this point. So it's one of those “bright points” where they successfully wrote an intentionally crappy ability instead of a laughably broken one. Yay.

Cybernetic Surgery And Surgical Expertise
Hey look Surgery in 10 minutes instead of 1 Hour, at the cost of a mere feat, oh and of course at least training in Treat Injury, and you probably want Focus... Well Surgery was... .actually really shit so fuck you too game.

BUT in combination with cybernetic surgery (which you apparently NEED in order to use treat injury to install cybernetic star wars merchandise, because FUCK YOU THE SKILL ISN'T ALLOWED TO DO THAT ON IT'S OWN) you can now do THAT in less time, but still out of combat time too! Because yeah... the game hates you because you decided to invest in out of combat skill monkey actions and aside from just your skill training slots it will now make you fucking burn your fucking feats on that shit too.

Shake It Off
You know what. Just invest in the shitty Endurance skill already. Because it also lets you take this and for only 2 instead of the default 3 swift actions (across up to two turns!) you too can ignore the application of the Condition Track bullshit in all bar Condition Track specialist encounters! I mean you could do it anyway but it USED to cost you your movement every second turn, NOW you can do it AND move every turn!

Running Attack
Is kinda bad wrong nasty. So it lets you move before AND after your melee attack on a charge. But... charge movement is uber short (just your base speed) and this doesn't give you extra. Aaaand the skill doesn't in itself let you ignore any AoOs. And neither does Charging. And it's all straight line only movement. So... you basically have like 3 AoO's/Tumbles to move almost nowhere of significance after a really rather short initial charge.... AND it cost you a feat for the luxury of ever trying it, assuming you can every figure out why the fuck you would do that.

Sniper
A bunch of bullshit skill tree requirements, but at least they are basic shooty things you probably have anyway. Then you can ignore cover when you shoot. Soft cover, from characters and junk, like say, the bullshit really shitty cover Crime Lords and Officers get as their big mandatory incremental class feature thing. Only you COULD have done that anyway AND ignored more cover to boot JUST by using the stupid god damn free Aim mechanic everyone has anyway. Which it reminds you of right here in this feat just so you know for sure that IT'S A TRAP.

Bantha Rush
Hey look, after hitting in melee you can move your opponent one square. And so almost every second ability in 4E was fucking born right here.

Burst Fire
I'm going to remind you again that Burst Fire is so badly written between it's feat entry and it's entry as a sub category of the Auto-fire action in the Combat rules chapter that while it PROBABLY is “full damage on hit, half on miss” instead of a standard attack. It doesn't say that here in feats and never actually explicitly commits to either, simply implicitly leaving it at probably “full damage on hit, half on miss”. About the only contribution from the feat text is to complicate matters and make a rather odd statement about an autofire attack against a specific target normally being a normal attack and wasting the extra bullets, even though THAT is totally fucking redundant because your autofire attack against one target is just an AoE with one target under it and it DOES do the normal Auto-attack stuff and DOESN'T “just waste the extra shots and make a normal attack”. Why have that text? Because fuck it, things need to be MORE confused and contradictory for MORE opportunities for conflicting interpretations to find supporting text and start a big argument over quibbling bullshit.

Crush, Pin, Throw, Trip AKA “The hidden other half of the grapple rules you need to page flip for when people use the fucking grapple rules no one knows”
Remember when Grapple rules said “ah fuck it, you want to know what grappling actually DOES? Fuck you go read the feats!”. Well here they are, the actual results of grapple.

In relatively little text, inflated by the need to make the page flip reference to the Grapple rules each time, they basically are “when you succeed on your grapple you get to, Trip them (with Trip) or throw them and trip them (with trip and throw... a whole 1 Square...), or Pin them (with Pin) or Pin them and unarmed damage them (with Pin and Crush). They COULD have written this in the fucking Grapple rules in the combat section.

But now you have to page flip all over the place for grappling.

Only you don't. Because players would have first had to page flip to even find out they aren't allowed to actually fucking push people over or hold them tight without investing fucking feats. And then, they probably won't invest the fucking feats because “Grappling Guy” is a kinda shitty edge case build with minimal damage and it's not a great extra option to tack on considering the costs when you need to spend every fucking resource on incremental bullshit bonuses to just the same old attack and damage rolls.

Improved Disarm
Gets to be a bonus to melee disarms only. Because in a game with force disarms and ranged shot disarms as explicit options, fuck you if you want to improve your edge case weirdo disarm build/fun little side option you are only allowed to get your bonus if you are a fucking melee monkey.

Toughness
Gets to be +1 HP per level now. Wooh. Not precisely exciting. More a move sideways into the “I still don't care only differently” dimension.

Vehicular Combat
So, remember how Block and Deflect are bad for the game because they let a character pretty close to break the game by using a massively front loaded skill at level 1 as a substitute for a basic defense score it significantly dwarfs? Well now PILOTS get to do that in vehicle combat at level 1 too using the pilot skill! OR Jedi can still do that using the Use The Force skill as a substitute for the Pilot skill!

I mean you probably don't because pilots are shit, if you actually get given a fucking vehicle to pilot at level one the game breaks due to having no actual concept of level adjustment (and that being generally bad thing anyway) and because this is actually notably inferior to Block/Deflect since it is hard capped at once per round.

But just in case you cared. A Speeder Bike is Ref 16, an X-Wing is ref 18, and a Corellian transport is a mere Ref 12. Your pilot is walking in at level 1 with easily +13 Pilot skill and adding a 1d20 to that instead of using their normal vehicle defense, and they get to see if the vehicle defense fails first. Oh. And they totally have a co-pilot on board giving them an aid another bonus on top of that, because basically that's all co-pilots CAN do and the game totally expects a PC to be doing that every turn. And liking it bitch!

Strong In The Force
Hey look, d8s instead of d6s for Force Point bonuses to rolls. It's a shitty incremental improvement to the one use of force points you should probably be avoiding the majority of the time, and it costs a Feat too.

Linguist
Yes, a reminder that after the system makes you blow feats on skill training it also offers you the option of blowing feats on more languages. Because you will TOTALLY DO THAT won't you? You will right? RIGHT? HAS THE WORLD GONE INSANE?

Martial Arts 1, 2 and 3
Yes, incremental bonuses to your unarmed damage Spend a mere 3 feats to deal 1d10 unarmed damage and still be REALLY sad compared to a light saber Jedi characters get as a free gift class feature at level 1. Oh and have a shitty incremental dodge bonus with it. Yeah, YOU ARE WELCOME!

But actually Martial arts gets a SPECIAL shout out here because you need martial arts 1 in order to make unarmed attacks without suffering an Attack Of Opportunity. BUT you WON'T KNOW THAT if you read the Martial Arts 1 feat, BECAUSE IT NEVER MENTIONS THAT. You need to read the AoO rules and notice that it is a bullet point on the AoO trigger list which is the only place in the game that says that.

I STILL don't know which is the misprint/fail including that rule in the AoO rules or NOT including it in the feat text. Considering Saga was “streamlining complex stuff” it could have been intended pretty much any or both ways.
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Post by Orca »

Kind of striking how much 4e picked up from Saga. Never mind ToB/ToM, it looks like Saga was the real test of ideas for 4e. Who were the writers again?
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Post by PhoneLobster »

The Game now tries to MAKE us care about the Heroic Traits Fluff Chapter! Because... IT IS OUR DESTINY (points)!!!
The “Optional” Destiny points rules that the game refers to directly a number of times in other rules as if they aren't so optional appear here. For some reason. I mean they COULD have gone in an actual rules chapter like “The Force” which is one of the main places where destiny points are referred to. But THAT would have meant no one would ever read the fucking fluff chapter so they put it here as bait to make you read the damn thing.

I will let them win this time and NOT just skip to the bit at the end with the actual new mechanic.

Minor Fluff Stuff Highlights
“Oh hey here is a great idea, name your character after a famous traitor everyone fucking hates and live your entire career trying to prove you aren't a total fucking asshole instead of changing your fucking name to something OTHER than “Space Hitler”...”

Age penalties/bonuses are as mentioned totally a thing. If your character concept is “really old jedi” you are totally encouraged to do that, and totally get additional life span at max age as a bonus if you do.

Charisma gets a shout out as being equivalent to a Beauty stat. Nice to see THAT still with us after all these years... Also nice to note that Jedi with the greatest powers (ie biggest Use The Force Bonus) get to be Beauty Queens as a result. Yes the game tries to let you not be wrangled into that stupid association... by letting your super jedi of force powerfulness have the option of being an "EXOTIC" Beauty Queen!

“Hey here is an idea, describe your PC as a smug smirky asshole who treats everything as a joke!” Well I suppose it IS star wars, but unless Harrison Ford is at the table no one is going to actually like this.

“Hey describe your character with “You know he means business and is dangerous just by looking at him!” in a sentence just after one about all the combat armour and weapons he wears.”

“You can have average height and weight, or you can just choose to have more or less, here are average heights and weights, no we have NOT included any indications of maximums or minimums for those who do not opt for the average. Yes that means your wookie can be one foot tall and weigh as much as a neutron star. Or in less extreme circumstances, yes you now have no fucking idea how tall or heavy a “big wookie” should be unless you know to flip back to the species chapter and HOPE that your species actually has a height range mentioned (which some do not) and no there is no weight range mentioned at all even then.”

“A good way to define your character is by racist stereotypes of their species! Only that's really bad and every wookie should be a unique person! So forget we just started out our Personality section with that little instant 180 and just move the fuck along, nothing to see here!”

And Now... Your Horrible Destiny
You have a “Destiny”even the NPCs do to! But YOU are a PC so you can earn Destiny Points by submitting to your fucking destiny already.

Your Destiny is ??? and you may choose not to have one for a while, or you may choose to have one, or you GM can foist one on you AND NOT FUCKING TELL YOU WHAT IT IS.

You will suffer “short term penalties” and stuff? For not following your destiny and gain “short term bonuses” and stuff? For following it. And yes this INCLUDES in the circumstance that the GM foists one on you AND DOESN'T TELL YOU WHAT IT IS.

The game EXPLICITLY outlines the idea that the GM should select your “secret destiny” then offer you chances to follow it WITHOUT TELLING YOU THAT THOSE ARE CHANCES TO FOLLOW IT, then just fucking penalize you or give you bonuses based on your unknowing responses to his secret fucking tests of your devotion to your secret fucking destiny, and this is all some sort of desirable “period of self discovery”.

Considering even aside from the secret destiny scenario the GM is flat out encouraged to make you choose between hurting your interests to follow your destiny (for real bonuses) OR doing sensible things that move the plot forward and help yourself and your friends (for real penalties) that means that the secret destiny scenario is a GIANT pile of fucking fuck you you fucker GM fuckery.

Actual Destiny Points
It's like someone tried to rewrite the shitty Force Point/Action Point system into “something even close to what action points should even fucking do” and then the lead designers said “fuck it, that's way too good, lets keep it AND the shitty action Force point system, but make it fake optional and hide it where no one can find it!”. And then they sorta undermined the bit where it was almost good as well. Then they took crystal meth and wrote the destiny descriptions.

So you get 1 Destiny Point per level and you can bank them up over time unlike Force Points. You can spend them to cause an auto miss against you, make an auto hit with an auto critical on an attack, act at any point in initiative order (not actually an extra action), take damage in place of another character next to you (you know, just like you can with that cheap ass soldier talent...), burn it on some power/talent upgrades, or swap it out for 3 force points.

OK so they clearly started out with a mission of “plot altering points” and somewhere along the line it turned into “not really that anymore”.

You can't spend your destiny points without selecting a “Fucking Destiny” which is stupid as hell because these are basically “I'm a main character” points and frankly THAT should be a good enough destiny to justify them, instead of openly inviting the GM to fuck you over with destiny based “hard choices”.

If you inadvertently fulfill your destiny you lose access to your destiny points until you select a new destiny. OR you can just give your incredibly limited pool of them to your buddies, because you'd totally do that right?

So before we go on, lets just note that actual Players will hardly ever spend Destiny points because they are bullshit rare to come by, and more so than the Force Points that are already bullshit rare enough. BUT unlike Force points it's harder to game the system for an unlimited supply with a bog standard “Force Technique” pretty much any force character will eventually have difficulty avoiding adding to their ability list. They still count as “spare lives” via “convert to 3 spare lives in force points” or via “fuck that shot killed me? Nope!”

And the natural combination of “You may need this resource not to permadie” and “you hardly ever get this resource” is players never using the fucking resource. Well, unless the promised permadie thing happens.

Sample Destinies
We now get an actual list of pre-written destinies with their rewards and punishments for making the “right” secret test/ally screwing choices according to how much your GM likes you and what the permanent thingy you get for begging the GM to just let you fucking fulfill your destiny already is.

Write Your Own – And the first entry on the list is “Other” because sure. Why not. This sub system is already so clear you could totally just make shit up on the spot right?

Corruption – You need to corrupt an individual (go with the jedi who likes force lightning, it's pretty much a sure thing), or an organization (because why corrupt one guy easily when you could have a very hard time corrupting vast numbers more for exactly the same real benefits?) or you can choose to corrupt a location, presumably you apply really bad feng shui to the millenium falcon's rec room furnishings what with neither a location nor how the fuck you corrupt it being defined anywhere here. As an added bonus you can opt for that one guy you “corrupt” to be YOURSELF because it just wasn't easy enough until the jedi who likes force lightning is YOU.
Bonus For Making the GM's “Hard Choices” – Your dark evil corruption provides a friendly bonus to all your lovely friends on their skill and ability checks all day long. The bonus if fucking +1.
Penalty For NOT Making the GM's bullshit choices – You personally sacrifice yourself for your buddies (in an evil way) on both in the action of the “hard choice” itself, AND with a -2 penalty on skill and ability checks all god damned day.
Permanent Gift The GM Gives You For A Blow Job – Increase two of your attributes by +1. THEN increase your Dark Side points to the setting of “The GM is encouraged to take this character away from you forever now” if it isn't there already, which is fucking crazy because if hitting that point isn't actually the trigger for fulfilling this destiny then FUUUUUUUUUCK...

Destruction – Look I KNOW these things keep saying “they should totally be hard to do” but “Destroy an object or person” and then not providing any limit other than a rather vague “totally try and make it a hard one or something right?” is just asking for all sorts of bullshit, trouble and arguments.
Bonus For Making the GM's “Hard Choices” – All day you and your (literally) closest buddies get +2 on all damage rolls. HAHAHAHA fuck you CORRUPTION GUY, this is way more dark sidey... of an incremental bonus...
Penalty For NOT Making the GM's bullshit choices – You get -2 to your personal damage rolls all god damn day. Just because you didn't do something counter productive to the interests of yourself and your friends in your inexplicable “definitely challenging” vendetta against that fucking asshole elephant alien thing that plays that flute thing at the fucking cantna.
Permanent Gift The GM Gives You For A Blow Job – Increase one ability score by +2 AND you can keep your fucking character because fuck you guy who selected (or was secretly saddled with) “Corruption” ahahahaha. Also you get to select a new destiny when you complete your old one, no limitation on selecting the same one, this bonus stacks, everyone can select the same destiny and the same target and you can all just repeatedly select the same “next boss monster and/or the space horse he rode in on”. Think on that.

Discovery – This one is find a lost or new thingy. It has the hard proviso, but limits it mostly to just “takes a long time” so presumably you can take the example of “long dead hero's remains” and just wait in a REALLY long queue for it. Even if that queue is just a fairly reasonable metaphorical one of “Ok so in like 3 sessions time when we next drop by near Dagobah (wow, that name sounds really racist actually) we totally need to drop by Yoda's old place”. So the challenge on this isn't precisely huge, and presumably every time you planet hop in vaguely the right direction you get your bonus.
Bonus For Making the GM's “Hard Choices” – Yada yada, all day, you and yout (literally) closest allies, +1 incremental bullshit to defenses. Ew.
Penalty For NOT Making the GM's bullshit choices – All day, blah blah, -1 incremental penalty to your defenses.
Permanent Gift The GM Gives You For A Blow Job – A permanent typed and therefore not stackable +1 incremental bullshit bonus to all your defences. I mean I GUESS you do this one once, because it's pretty damned easy, and your target is either “tourist stop it takes a while to get around to” or “hard to find place the campaign requires we go to anyway” then pick the next nearest “challenging” boss fight you were already going to have for more Destruction destiny stacking instead.

Education – Eeek, this one is bullshit hard. You need to educate other people and not only does it need to be hard and take ages it SPECIFICALLY needs to also be of “Great importance to the galaxy”. So really you can do this one if and only if the GM is doing a “save the fucking galaxy” story line for the campaign, in which case it moves from “fucking impossible” to “little more than repeatedly asking ARE WE (nearly) THERE YET?” and presumably fulfilling this piece of crap destiny shortly before your prodigy fulfils whatever amounts to a “save the fucking universe already” destiny. And then the game ends.
Bonus For Making the GM's “Hard Choices” – Boooh! It's that +1 to everyone's skill checks again, BOOOH! Cearly this destiny is fucking you over while you wait to finally fulfil the damn thing.
Penalty For NOT Making the GM's bullshit choices – Hey look -2 to your own skill checks again. So four whole destinies in and we already ran out of ideas and need to recycle the piddling little rewards/penalties from the first one hey, BRILLIANT.
Permanent Gift The GM Gives You For A Blow Job – A permanent +5 to skill checks. The skill is Use The Force and you are a force user who breaks the numbers or you were wasting your fucking time on this one.

Redemption – Oh FOR FUCKS SAKE. The requirement text on this fucker. So you need to turn a Dark Side fallen character or someone “who simply sided with evil over good” in some way back to being nice. There is NO MEANS OF DOING THIS, the only way a character does this is if they (ie the GM) chooses to be persuaded for that character to voluntarily do this. BUT the fucking text of this destiny goes and fucking says it “requires far more than simple persuasion” well FUCK then, because how the hell else other than fucking persuasion are we going to convince someone to do something voluntarily? I don't give a shit if your persuasion includes throwing yourself in the path of force lightning, it's still fucking persuasion. I can only guess it is just flat out persuasion THE SKILL they are ruling out as not being of any fucking use here. BUT that isn't the giant fuck you on this one, OH NO. Remember how redeeming yourself from the dark side is frequently suicidal in nature even after sucking the GM off? This one says “Often a character that fulfills this destiny does not survive it, and sometimes neither does their redeemed target”. Oh FUCK YOU TOO Redemption Destiny FUCK YOU TOO.
Bonus For Making the GM's “Hard Choices” – A force point. A fucking force point. Taking real steps along the path to a mutual suicide pact with some evil dude and doing so potentially in direct conflict with personal interest and the interests of your allies is worth ONE FUCKING FORCE POINT a pop.
Penalty For NOT Making the GM's bullshit choices – Lose a force point each time you say “mutual suicide, not today thanks” then when you run out, cop a -1 to all attack rolls until you next level up.
Permanent Gift The GM Gives You For A Blow Job – GNNNAAAAGGGH! I hate you game, I hate you so god damn much. Your reward for all that? Oh hey, your target gets dark side redemption. Which you know, they do ANYWAY just from performing the redeeming act nessacary to you know, be fucking redeemed. Of course the actual effect of this text means that if the character merely “sided with evil” they get redeemed ANYWAY which among other things means they just senselessly lost all their fucking force points. Then you get to have those force points AND several more. FAN FUCKING TASTIC, all it cost you was your life, and the life of your redeemed victim and you DIDN'T EVEN GET A FUCKING PERMANENT BONUS TO ANYTHING UNLIKE EVERYONE FUCKING ELSE.

Rescue – So you COULD die along with your redeemed victim, OR you can just save someone, anyone, you don't even need to know who, it can just be one of your regular allies, the GM can just go, “oh hey you saved someone? Fuck it, have your destiny buddy”. This one not only lacks the “long time or difficult in some way” proviso it specifically says you pretty much just need to be lucky and be “in the right place at the right time”. So I guess, fuck you Redemption guy, you are a GIANT FUCKING SUCKER now aren't you?
Bonus For Making the GM's “Hard Choices” – The +2 damage bonus one again, because the combat bonuses go to the NICE Destinies not the mean naughty ones! Though if you are allowed to not even fucking know your rescue target and just cruise around the galaxy waiting for “the right place at the right time” I guess you either ALWAYS get this or NEVER get this.
Penalty For NOT Making the GM's bullshit choices –The damage penalty one. Again. And again, I guess if your are doing the right place and time thing you again either always or never get this.
Permanent Gift The GM Gives You For A Blow Job – Oh look a permanent +1 to two ability scores, again. And it stacks, again. And you could just repeat this forever. Everyone in the party could reasonably just expect this any time they “save” each other. Again and again. Forever. And yeah, totally fuck you and your lame expendable non permanent force points bonus double suicide “Redemption guy” YOU TOTAL SUCKER.

NO MORE DESTINES
That's it, the full gammut from “real incremental stacking bonuses forever for what you were doing anyway” to “Fuck you, die in a fucking fire, along with your fucking friend, in fucking return for fucking NOTHING”. And in just short of no options too. Very efficient.

BUT THE CRAZY ISN'T OVER! Now... Death And Destiny!
Oh hey so if you die and you are a force guy and it's like your destiny or something, HERE the GM can let you be a Force Spirit now, because transparent meaningless Cameo's will totally make up for the total death of your fucking PC. Yeah. Not a force user? Fuck you go straight to the sacrificial inspiration stuff...

… hey look every time “an ally” dies fulfilling their destiny ALL allies in the same star system for a whole day get a shitty incremental +1 to attack and defenses. Hey look. NPCs have destinies, destinies include “other” and other should TOTALLY include “be sacrificed for the greater cause” and hey there are no fucking requirements on how you die other than it be destiny related (it doesn't even have to be related to the fucking destinies or even short term goals of the allies that benefit!) so hey I guess all major star system battles involve each side making a RITUAL SACRIFICE every day to give their hundreds of thousands of troops an incremental little bonus for 24 hours. Hell those troops can then go on and USE THE BONUS ON FUCKING ANYONE, including each other or in direct conflict to the goals and destiny of the sacrificial character, because hey, why even define that stuff am I rite?

And LOOK if the bonus you get from that happening EVEN IF YOU DO NOT KNOW ABOUT IT within the same star system isn't enough as long as you SEE that death, hell even on video I guess, you get +2 attack and damage! That doesn't flat out stack with the other bonus, even though if you get this one the other is applying already anyway, but thats a net +2 attack +2 damage and +1 to defenses. And you either opt out or get a Dark Side point if you are a force user (because fuck you... leads to the dark side hur hur hur). And while only allies of the dead guy get the bonus, they then get a full day to use it on anyone or anything they want to, because even though its a “Vengeance” bonus... you can just go and use it to pursue your senseless unrelated vendetta against that fucking Cantina Elephant thing.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Sat Nov 08, 2014 2:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Insomniac »

Orca wrote:Kind of striking how much 4e picked up from Saga. Never mind ToB/ToM, it looks like Saga was the real test of ideas for 4e. Who were the writers again?
SAGA was clearly the dry run for 4E, if 4E had hewed much closer to 3.5 than what it did. Chrisopher Perkins said "ideas flowed freely" between SAGA and 4E as SAGA was being developed alongside 4E. Rodney Thompson also had work with 4th and 5th edition and on SAGA.
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Post by Dean »

fbmf wrote:
RadiantPhoenix wrote:Howsabout I, or someone else, start a thread for people to post complete SAGA characters so we can have solid things to compare?
What I don't get is people complaining that PL is being disingenuous, but you won't quote the rule book at him.

If PL is outright lying about what the rules say, quote the rule book to prove he is wrong.
Someone who says "Forcecage is a useless spell that no one takes" is an idiot but they can't have the rulebook quoted at them and be called a liar. That's not a lie, it is a statement of opinion and even though it's incredibly stupid there's no quote in the rules that says it's illegal to be stupid. PL's statement for Evasion are the same. What would you like me to quote? How about Saga's enemy selection: Besides statted characters like Luke and Han there are 13 listed enemy character types and 9 of them have AOE attacks. Then there are 7 droid types to fight and 4 of them have AOE attacks. Then there are 6 listed enemy vehicles and all 6 of them use AOE attacks. Then they list beasts like Tauntauns and Rancors and, obviously, none of them have AOE attacks.

Almost all of the enemies without AOE's are melee only. In Saga if an enemy shoots he shoots with an AOE and AOE's always hit. We are talking about the usefulness, in that environment, of a single talent that can let you totally ignore most AOE using enemies. Evasion is absolutely the best single talent you can buy in Saga, no questions, there is nothing even close to it, but when PL says it's useless garbage he's not technically lying because that's an opinion statement. What's he's doing is not lying but being dishonest, because he's had the truth of the matter demonstrated to him several times and his response is to keep repeating things he knows are wrong.

What would you like that I'm not giving you? What rule would you quote at someone who said that Forcecage is useless? What rule would you reference if they wrote a 4000 word post proving Forcecage was bad by showing that level 2 characters can beat CR appropriate enemies without using Forcecage? I'll tell you what you'd do you'd call them a dishonest asshat because they are arguing in bad faith with no mind to saying things that are correct.
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Post by DSMatticus »

That wouldn't be an opinion. It's a fact that solid fog wrecks a huge number of level appropriate opponents, but you won't find "solid fog wrecks a huge number of level appropriate opponents" anywhere in the book. You just have the ability text and a bunch of statblocks and from there you have to put two and two together. So while whether or not solid fog is awesome is a more difficult argument to have than "does the book physically contain this sentence, y/n?" it is still a factual argument and if someone says solid fog is useless they are either an idiot or a liar and proving that they are either an idiot or a liar will require more than quoting the rulebook at them.

I think that's exactly what you're trying to reason out and have just stumbled into some bad terminology along the way, but all the same I think it should probably be pointed out sooner rather than later.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

God Damned Droids
With fucking Destiny points having driven me near on to the point of irreversible insanity it is CLEARLY time to skip around and do the DROIDS CHAPTER. While I still have any sanity left to lose.

Slavity Slave Slave Slave Slavity Slave
The chapter starts out a whole page of going on about how droids are totally slaves, considers that might be bad for PC droids, then tells you to go ahead and try it anyway if everyone agrees.

All up through the whole chapter there is a rather a lot of text dedicated to the role of droids as slaves and various ways they are and can be enslaved.

Null Constitution, lets keep THAT rule!
Yep. Thats right. Droids don't have a god damn constitution score. One of the dumbest “construct” legacy rules of the 3.x era and in the “reformed” and “improved” saga edition... still batting around because????

Custom Or Premade?
You can play a “premade” droid or a “custom” droid.

Premade droids are batshit and work a bit like a slightly deranged version of a 3.x PC with monster levels taking PC levels to advance. Or more specifically you take a droid monster entry that is small or medium and does NOT have a remote processor, you make sure it costs under 5000 credits.

THEN if if doesn't have a heuristic processor you have to add one for 2000 credits (of your 5000 credit allowance) IF you can, because YOU actually have to buy your own brain before you are allowed to be a playable character.

THEN you get your monster levels free, but only if you have “no more than three non-heroic levels”.

BUT if you have LESS than three non-heroic levels then you can ALSO have ONE heroic level! But it costs you 1500 of your 5000 credit total starting cost allowance.

AND then if you have levels when you start (which you do if you are premade) you start with the XP you need for that already.

AND THEN at the end check your 5000 credit starting body/brain/level allowance, now you can't have that money but you CAN now customize your dumb ass premade droid and largely eliminate the point of BEING premade by adding or replacing (but apparently not removing??) stuff until you hit your limit, and it somewhat implies you could downgrade a few options (but not levels) to potentially make a droid over the limit playable.

BUT THEN you go look at the droid entries you could convert and they ALSO sometimes just say “Can be played as droid heroes” or “Can't be played as droid heros” or sometimes it says nothing. And it says nothing on some large droids that don't meet size requirements. It says you CAN play some droids that exceed the NPC levels cap even though the level cap requirement for playable droids included NO note that you can back engineer lower level versions of droid entries and let alone an actual methodology to do so, and then there are some droids like the B1 Series Battle Droid which DOES meet the requirements for a playable premade droid IF you add a heuristic processor, which the requirements tell you you can just do and is within starting price requirements for that droid... BUT that droid is labled as CAN'T be played as a droid hero!

So actually the answer to “which droids can I play premade?” is ?????? followed by, “and they are probably customised anyway”.

Wait, Wait, Isn't that crazy, like possibly even crazier than the standard 3.5 edition level adjustment monster character bullshit?
Why yes. Yes it is.

Your starting droid in a level 1 party COULD be …

A Custom Droid with 1 Heroic Class level.
A Premade Droid with 1 Non-Heroic Class Level
A Premade Droid with 2 Non-Heroic Class Levels
A Premade Droid with 3 Non-Heroic Class Levels
A Premade Droid with 1 Non-Heroic Class Level and 1 Heroic Class Level
A Premade Droid with 2 Non-Heroic Class Levels and 1 Heroic Class Level

And while you can have an argument about how much those non-heroic class levels are worth, and by how much of a margin the 2 Non-Heroic/1 Heroic character is better (or worse!) than the other options (spoiler, it's actually worse than just a heroic level)... I think one thing that SHOULD be fucking clear is all those options are NOT FUCKING EQUAL.

But the game does treat them as equal and expects them to stand side by side with level 1 heroic class biological characters like it is no big deal.

Wait A Second If I Start With Non-Heroic Levels don't the shitty Multi-class/Non-Heroic character Rules Fuck Me Over?
Why yes. Why yes they do.

Lets say you get your “non-heroic” an ASP Labour Droid (the only actual droid profile in the droid chapter that has 2 NPC class levels and is playable, probably, AND has enough starting price left for you to actually buy that 1 Heroic level with) with 2 levels in class “the crappy tier NPCs only get one class”.

And you get those class levels FIRST because you only actually add your 1 level of heroic class AFTER them during character creation.

Now there are certain things you ONLY GET AT CHARACTER LEVEL 1. And YOURS are going to be set by your shit NPC class instead of your heroic class. Also by not being heroic at level 1 you also lose out on stuff.

So you lose out on...
Destiny points for your first two levels. (whatever?)
You do NOT get Maximum Hit Points at first level.
You do NOT get 3x the normal Hit Die (then maximised) at first level.
You in fact get just 1d4+cons hit points on first level instead of those things.
You do NOT get your heroic class starting feats, you get NPC starting feats (you do get three, you do get to pick from a list, it does have things you want, it however specifically doesn't have some things you might want and isn't nearly as long as the starting feats on Soldier, and if you are a droid hero YOU ARE PROBABLY A FUCKING SOLDIER). You will later get ONE of your heroic starting feats.
You do NOT get your heroic class starting SKILLS and you will NOT later get free training in any of them just for taking your heroic class. Instead you get ONE skill + Int bonus trained. The LOWEST possible base trained skills.

Also non-heroic levels do not add to your defenses, non-heroic levels do not add to your Damage, and non-heroic levels do this crazy ass thing where every 4 non-heroic levels you get +1 to only 1 Ability score, while heroic levels get that on 2 scores, but BOTH refer to CHARACTER levels and NIETHER ever tells you what the fuck to do if you change from being a non-heroic character to being a heroic character. (not to mention that there is MORE text in droids that makes that situation even less clear instead of better).

So generally adding 2 NPC levels on the front of your character before gaining a heroic level is really fucking stupid and loses you more than you will gain. This still doesn't make the whole thing where there are 6 different combinations of class levels from 1 to 3 that are all treated as level 1 starting characters any less bug fuck crazy but it DOES mean that actually while you MIGHT think that the 2 non-heroic/1 heroic is the best, it is very likely WORSE than just 1 Heroic level.

So what about the Premade Options out there otherwise?
Well there is some serious suffering to under go on the attributes front for a start. Since the premade option makes you just take the listed NPC attributes instead of back engineering them for bonuses and adding them to a more er, “heroic” attribute array... you get some really shit attributes, it hurts real hard if you want to actually be a brand name R2 or 3PO unit. And it's not like the default options get anything spectacular in “other” in built features, the best it gets is “Flying Locomotion (Limited)” on an R2 unit, and it's not like you can't put your 3PO unit in a jet pack or a vehicle if you really want to fly anyway.

If you aren't somehow exploiting your extra non-heroic levels, in some sorta crazy way that avoids the bit where they totally fucking gimp you due to the stingy multi-classing/1st level/non-heroic rules, you simply do NOT make a premade droid from any of the core book droids because they kinda suck.

So how do Custom Droids Work?
So custom droids get a species option. Only it isn't sort of, but it really is. You pick your “degree” which is basically your droids designated industry (construction, doctoring, war, bad comic relief, sitting in the back of the x-wing backseat driving and swearing at luke in droid language, etc...), and your “species” selection then gives you basic stat modifiers... and vague career advice instead of species special abilities.

Droid ability modifiers aren't precisely FAIR or anything, strength is massively overvalued and your labor droids get +4 str in return for a massive -8 in penalties split evenly between Int and Cha. But then droids don't really need Cha since they won't be Using The Force any time soon. The rest of the droid modifiers range from net +2 to net -2 and none of them are precisely attractive modifiers to your attribute profiles for any given role. I mean if you want to be a fighty soldier degree droid? Oh hey, +2 dex, -2 Int, -2 cha, have a nice day with your net -2 modifiers all just for a fairly piddling little +2 dex! Might as well walk in as a damned “Technical” droid for +2 int and only -2 cha no one cares about for your soldier droid build at that rate.

That aside you then further customize your droid's basic physical abilities by getting to choose your size. Medium or Small, that's it the rest are explicitly GM only. Your size also modifies your cost factor, so if you DO pick small droid many of your droid systems are going to cost you double. Which is kinda problematic.

Then You can “Customise” Your Systems (AKA THE DROID WITH ONE HUNDRED AND TWO ARMS AT LEVEL 1)
But just as the 5000 credit limit on “Premade” droids potentially results in a bunch of customization to reach the limit. The limits on the “Custom” droid are in fact low enough that, god damnit, you won't be doing much customizing of your starting droid.

You get two arms, and a brain, free. They normally cost you 2100 credits (2200 for small droids, because fuck those guys). Assuming the unamed vague free “appendages” you selected were the oh so pricey “hands”. BUT your appendages are NOT defined and they ARE free, so you either get Telescoping Hands (100/200 each instead of 50/100 each) so you can yell “go go gadget arms!” but then only reach one more square (damnit inspector gadget is more Over Powered than you!), OR you can go with a “Stabilised” Tool Mount, assuming you find it in the text since it doesn't get to appear on the appendages price table, and for the same cost as a basic hand you can basically strap on a two handed gun or something in the space you normally keep one hand.

Then you don't get legs for free. And you have a budget of 1000 credits to pay for legs “and everything else”.

Locomotion systems are... weird... Lets start with the fact that the basic speed and movement types (and the formula to multiply together for their price) are on one table together, but then there are modifiers for those systems in the text describing locomotion types, now some of those modify the movement abilities with climbing and jumping and fucking magnets and THOSE for some reason are only priced not in the text but as entries in the APPENDAGES table even though they only effect LOCOMOTION SYSTEMS that are NOT APPENDAGES and DO NOT APPEAR ON THE FUCKING APPENDAGES TABLE. But that isn't fucking enough because THEN there are also the bits with pricing of extra locomotion systems which only appear in the text about getting locomotion systems, AND then there are restriction modifiers for your locomotion systems that make them worse, which only appear in the text about locomotion systems where they ARE priced with really bad wording.

Oh and then also extra legs are text only locomotion modifiers...

Actual pricing is (Locomotion Type Modifier) X (Droid Cost Factor) X (Speed Squared) X 2 (for climbing claws) X 2 (for Jump Servos) X 2 (for Magnetic Feet) THEN you add 500 X (Droid Cost Factor) if it is your second locomotion system, 1000 X (Droid Cost Factor for the 3rd, 2000 X (Droid Cost Factor) for the 4th and 5000 X (Droid Cost Factor for the fourth.

AND THEN thanks to bad wording if you have Extra Legs you double the cost. But if the system is “Restricted” using either Exclusive (activate or de-activate with move actions, can only move and run while using it) or Limited (Endurance DC 10+1 per check after first or cannot use it again for 1 minute). THEN you divide the cost by 10. You can apply both... and still only divide the cost by 10.

And your Locomotion Type Modifiers of course are based on how good the locomotion type is, so its Walking 10, Wheeled 5, Tracked 20 (wait whut?), then Hovering 100 and Flying 200 (wait also whut?). So apparently Flying is better than Hovering (because you can go faster? No wait, actually flying is unlimited hovering and hovering is “hovering within 3m of the ground” well that makes sense... sort of...), and Tracked is better than walking (because they ignore rough terrain compared to walkers (really?) but suffer a -5 climb penalty).

Your Speed is however NOT a number you just pick even though its presented as an implied variable multiplier, it would appear bad wording and a badly presented table just flat out set your speed based on droid size and the locomotion type selected. It ranges from 4 to 12 and I couldn't be assed beyond that..

Now if lots of random MULTIPLIERS sounds like that could get crazy. Well yes. Yes it could. Your default medium droid walks around on nice cheap 6 square per turn 60 credit legs. OR they could FLY around at 12 squares (no more AND NO LESS!) for 2400 credits (outside your starting budget). The best locomotion within starting budget is probably 600 credit 6 square hovering. BUT you can exploit limited locomotion systems to give yourself Limited Flight (or Exclusive, but screw that) for only 290 Credits, so you might as well hover AND much of the time fly for only 890 credits (or walk and often fly for 350). Not to mention you can have Walking Climbing, Magnetic Jump Servo legs for a mere... 480 credits even with the 2X2X2 multipliers. Hell, throw on Extra Legs for only 840. I mean those multipliers are bullshit but the totals are cheap. UNLESS you are a small droid then it all costs double and some of the options are now off the charts.

Because as we know small droids are harder to propel through the air and you need to buy bigger more expensive jet engines to get them off the ground.

Anyway. If you really want to spend money on ACTUAL droid customization you now have 940 credits left after a mere standard pair of legs. OR you buy a cool locomotion system (one of the few cool droid things you can get as a starting character) and have maybe 100 and something credits left to spend after hovering and flying everywhere or being a multiple limbed jumping climbing magnetic spider (not as cool as it sounds, the climbing and jumping bonuses are fairly lame).

But you need to spend 100 credits to hide your shutdown switch so other people can't find it, and in order to be allowed to talk in anything but beeps and boops.

If you go for the biggest remaining customisation budget after that you have about 840 credits left.

And with THAT you can buy 16 more hands/arms. Which is hilarious, but sad since there appears to be just short of no way to use them that we actually care about with dual wielding explicitly capping out at one attack with one extra equipped weapon no matter how many extra equipped weapons you have.

So you can instead buy the lamest built in armour. And no more than that. And have it out-armoured by some guy in a PADDED FLIGHT SUIT. Including a 3PO unit in a padded flight suit, since 3PO units, and indeed most custom droids can just do that. And no you DON'T get around armour proficiencies using built in armour.

Well you COULD buy a comlink. And you will, because it's cheap as dirt, but then you can buy those anyway without being a droid and sticking it in your internal droid compartments.

You COULD have Improved Sensors and Darkvision (because EVERYTHING in this game must incrementally fuck over stealth characters with more incremental perception bonuses). But it's not exactly exciting.

You COULD self destruct? Right? You'd do that with your PC right?

You could buy a... DC 15 translator unit! Once time DC 15 chance to know any language you hear!!!

Yeah OK lets face it your custom droid hovers and flies and has two hands and a brain and that's basically it.

BUT WAIT!
You could be a totally shit Premade droid, be an ASP Series Labor Droid, not buy the heroic level you'll get eventually anyway, Buy yourself a brain AND THEN YOU GET TWICE THE REMAINING CUSTOMIZATION BUDGET COMPARED TO A CUSTOM DROID. AND you already have legs and build in +4 armour for free!

The additional options of starting droid legitimate affordable upgrades you can get with more than double the budget at a flat 2000 credits to customize with after being a barely functional humanoid (with shitty claws for hands)? Um.... ok actually you can't even afford the shitty SR 5 shield unit, but you CAN afford a DC 5 Translation unit!!!! (Mind you then you don't have a vocabulator so you can't talk and the Int you use to make that DC 5 check is Int 6, which is sort of hilarious.) OR I guess you can just buy 40 more Arms, hell, make them shitty claws and you can have an extra ONE HUNDRED ARMS!!!! (That you can't productively use).

Still. Fuck you game, if you make me play a droid I'm going to have ONE HUNDRED AND TWO ARMS, I will pick up, equip and keep EVERY WEAPON I EVER FUCKING ENCOUNTER. I will track them all and their remaining ammo individually and I will browse through them all each turn and use them ONE AT A FUCKING TIME. Sure those arms ARE claws so everytime I try to use weapons that need hands I have a strong chance of dropping them, but whatever, I have plenty more hands and weapons and it just ADDS to the joke value of the joke droid, which is what droids are FOR, apparently.

Slavity Slave Slave Upgrades For Slaves
And upgrades also talk about restraining bolts Droid callers and Behavioural Inhibitions and inbuilt fuck you obey programming and memory wipes that destroy all your level advancement and ALL THAT FUN.

It's so GOOD to be a droid hey?

More Basic Droid Traits
Regardless of what sort of droid you take and what sort of exciting slavery upgrades it's fetish masters apply to it, you also get some basic droidy traits.

You cannot be a Jedi. At level 1. Due to poor wording, you can be a Jedi after that. But you cannot gain the Force Sensitive feat, and you cannot gain Force Powers, but due to another bit of poor wording you CAN have a huge argument about whether you can gain the Use The Force skill as trained since that jedi level you take gives you Use the Force as a class skill EVEN THOUGH you don't have the Force Sensitivity feat that ALSO gives it to you as a class skill but also says you cannot train it without the feat.

You aren't allowed to attack living things. Unless you suck the GMs Cock or select Battle Droid as your “degree”. So basically you select battle droid otherwise you have mandatory explanations/story time to give every time you want attack a living creature.

You are vulnerable to Ion damage.

You can run out of batteries.

You get another reminder or two about reprogramming and getting your memory wiped and generally being a slave.

You don't count as a live, don't get a constitution score, you are immune to mind effects, stunning, atmosphere stuff, vacuum stuff, radiation, disease and poison. You use Strength on your Fortitude defense because whatever they needed to try and make this no-cons thing work because damnit they just did! And that argument is only allowed for Heuristic droids, remote droids apparently get stiffed with the flat out "you just can't" bit of the text.

You get a big paragraph about not dying or being KOed at 0 HP and instead being destroyed or disabled at 0 HP as if we damn well care.

You don't get to heal automatically and need bullshit applications of the shitty Mechanics skill to be repaired of HP damage. Thats DC 20 flat regardless of level and then cops a -5 if you try it on yourself. So at low levels a droid character either invests in the "heal myself" skill tax pretty hard or brings a mechanic or never fucking gets basic healing.

You don't sleep but if you don't rest a tiny bit very rarely you get low on batteries instead of tired and no one fucking cares.

You can be shut down with a bullshit grapple and a a bullshit mechanics check, and then you pay 50 credits and become immune to that forever and wonder why that doesn't just come standard to save the rules text.

SOME DROIDS CANNOT USE UNTRAINED SKILLS. Which is hilarious. You ARE specifically permitted to use SOME untrained, just Acrobatics, Climb, Jump and Perception. Notably this list DOES NOT INCLUDE INITIATIVE. So if you DON'T train initiative on your droid (who, if they are a premade droid gets ONE +Int trained skill) you apparently just don't do the whole initiative thing or something. I guess they wrote this and forgot the bit where they made Initiative a skill... BUT fortunately Hueristic droids (and only hueristic droids, so fuck you remote droids!) can ignore this one. The game DOES still collapse in many cases when a droid turns up and initiative gets rolled, fortunately not with PCs.

Reprogramming Your Droid
You can reprogram your droid. It is a shitty idea. What it is is an over complex “Retrain” for skills and feats, with various pointless little hoops to jump through in stupid Computer Use checks and hiring some guy to do your computer use checks ALL just to say “Can I just change my stupid Feat that turned out to be useless to some other stupid Feat that might give me a whole incremental +1 to something I actually do these days?”

Customising Your Droid Later On
Actually there is fuck all you care about, you might splash out the small amount to make your “sometimes flies” to “always flies”, and you might buy bigger armour plating instead of wearing a bigger armour suit.

But really there are only two notable options for further upgrades.

In built shields. Up to SR 15 on a medium droid. That's 15 damage reduction, but when exceeded it becomes 10, then when exceeded it's 5, then nothing. So it's nice.... but not really worth being a fucking droid. By the time you have it there is a good chance it gets exceeded on every hit and you basically just bought yourself a flat 30 HP.

THEN there is the whole remote processor thing, and assuming you trust the GM not to use it as an excuse to apply all that lovely slavity slave slave droids are slave stuff to you you can pay someone else to REPLACE YOUR BRAIN for you with a new brain that lets you remote control other bodies with remote control brains in them. Not that we care because you are a droid (so your mind is crap) and the bodies you are controlling are droid bodies so they are crap. What we DO care about though is that the various remote transmitter and receiver processors are NOT explicitly Heuristic processors, so all the text about not being able to attack living things (now no exception for you because you aren't heuristic) and not being able to use untrained skills now applies to you if you upgrade your PC to a remote brain.

Saving A Back Up Of Your Droid
You can back up your mind and load it onto another droid. You CAN move to a new body but generally wouldn’t as there isn't really much in that other than trying to steal superior physical attributes that probably aren't all that crash hot anyway.

And the costs and risks of moving your mind around are dumb, you cannot do it yourself, you cannot copy yourself, you make an Int Check or suffer permanent irreversible int damage. That's an attribute check and with sufficient DC that you pretty much always will have some chance of failing. And regardless you lose a class level every time you do this. But it's the Int gamble that's the total buzz kill here.

So you probably don't do this. At a stretch you do it once to cheat on your attribute rolls. If you put really shitty ones on your initial physical attributes and don't mind if the new ones aren't all that great. And if you roll low and lose significant Int you pretty much may as well tear up your fucking character sheet and beg for a new character because the alternative is being gimped for life.

The Droid Chapter Signs Out By...
Having the words “Place near the Droideka stats:” followed by a picture of some droid hunting a cthulhu faced guy with a blaster pistol. Two pages on from the Droideka stats. In the “Revised” edition of this book.

I feel it captures much of the essence of the droid chapter in many ways.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Sat Nov 08, 2014 10:44 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

The Jet Pack Chapter Equipment
Fucking Trade Goods
Are our first stop on the road to ?Jet Packs Yet? And are introduced as an alternative wealth form to Cash. THEN while introducing a table with the prices for trade goods on it the game tells you prices “vary greatly” and frequently markets do not sell OR buy the full list. BUT THEN when you go to the Selling Items section it back tracks and says that no, actually they are easily exchangeable “almost like cash”...

Also the trade goods table gives prices by the unit. Which is nice. But the presented concept is this is stuff you fill your cargo holds with. And while it gives weights for SOME items (and for some reason LENGTHS of textiles...) on the list by unit it doesn't give it for all items. So while 10 units of Art(Precious) is worth more than 10 units of Animal(Exotic) we have no idea how much of either you can actually carry on the god damn millennium falcon. So you can conceivably make an informed choice over whether to carry Gems or Metals, when it comes to Animals, Art, Textiles and Holovids it's all up in the air.

License Restrictions
Are back (sort of) from d20modern. So now you need to get a license. Or not. It's kinda optional. You can just loot things and pay for black market goods and so on. Really we only care about this because it tries to make “Knowledge(Bureaucracy)” into a “thing” in this system, and it basically just exists for this and some bullshit with smuggling/trading/entry visas or dumb stuff like that. So it's worth taking note that you may well actually buy a crappy bureaucracy droid NPC. You won't get a PC to invest in the skill because, holy crap Knowledge(Bureaucracy) really? And I point this out largely because it looks like some idiot went “hm... Paranoia has Bureaucracy skills so I KNOW LETS ADD IT TO STAR WARS.

In the mean time groups without a dedicated Bureaucracy Droid slave will laughably fail to get a mere Restricted Licence about half the time up to level 10. By which time the actual 300% cost they pay on the black market for shit items like force pikes they often as not will have just picked up off the ground by level 2 (and have likely left multiple copies of lying on the ground by level 5ish) will be largely inconsequential anyway.

Of course even the black market requires a skill no one wants in the form of Gather Information, but as bad as it is it's way less of a joke skill than Bureaucracy so someone might actually have that one.

Weapon Groups
Blah blah groups of weapons for proficiencies. Mostly broad but fuck you if you want Exotic weapons as those are 1 feat per weapon and inexplicably “Lightsabers” are their own group. Which is stupid in several ways, but hardly surprising.

At this point who cares about even more bad rules text?
There are weapons that do grappling stuff but refer to text in bad incomplete ways that cause confusion. But did anyone at this point expect anything less?

Light Sabers and Damage Reduction
Lightsabers ignore damage reduction. This is important to note because the descriptions of lightsabers in the equipment chapter NEGLECT TO MENTION THIS IMPORTANT FACT. You have to actually read the combat rules section where this information appears partially in regard to object DR on the damaging objects rules, and then in full in the section that basically outlines “DR, what is it?”.

Bayonets
Because ranged attackers should threaten AoOs in melee too, because why the fuck not. I mean. You just can't make shooty characters good enough can you? They just need every additional bonus we can give them. Starting with everything melee attackers do. Apparently.

Damage Numbers
Are worth noting. Basically everything melee we care about in Saga is “2dX” instead of more traditional d&d where it's mostly “1dX” except for the big stuff.

And then if that weren't enough basically all the ranged options, instead of dealing smaller amounts of damage as some sort of pay off for being ranged... all get to be “3dX”.

So the most common stuff you're going to see are mid range options of probably lightsabers (2d8+2xStr bonus two handed) and Heavy Blaster Pistol (just 3d8). So even though you have like 30+HP at level 1 and a threshold of maybe 12 or so for damage track and other bullshit... average damage rolls are knocking you down in a little over two hits and regularly exceeding your Fort defense in order to move you down condition tracks and/or perma-kill you if you reach 0 HP.

And a Missile Launcher
And if you thought autofire wasn't bad enough have a 6d6 missile launcher that does what autofire does only without the -5 attack penalty.

And about Ranged Weapon Ranges
Oh and if you want to figure out the range/range penalties for your ranged weapon, you don't get to have that actually on the weapon descriptions or in the table with the profile with the rest of their stuff in any format at all. It only appears in the separate weapon ranges table where weapon ranges are determined by group.

Notably Heavy weapons can attack at a maximum range for -10 to attack at 500 squares. And basically if you have a heavy weapon it does the whole autofire/burst fire/missile launcher thing for automatic damage even on misses. So enjoy closing 500 squares of that as a melee character, or even a pistol range category waving hero who needs to be at 80 squares before he gets the luxury of making a ranged attack type that actually CAN miss and deal no damage on an attack.

Grenades
Are a thing, but you can only throw them about 12 squares. So if you want to do AoEs probably best to stick to the rocket launchers and the various autofire blasters.

The thermal detonator is about the only grenade to (barely) outpace the damage compared to many heavy weapons, but it's stupidly expensive for an expendable, especially considering you can buy frag grenades for one tenth the cost and two of them are worth the same damage as one vaunted thremal detonator. Though to be fair the thermal detonator has a bigger AoE, at a lame 4 squares it is perhaps the biggest AoE in the game (which is pretty lame considering)... if you ignore the star system long and wide cone a force slam jedi can potentially throw out about five seconds before someone corrects that obvious rules failure.

Heavy Explosives
Sometimes grenades and thermal detonators are not enough! So in that case you can invest in the BIG BANGS! … of options that deal between 2d6 more than a thermal detonator or 3d6 less than a thermal detonator, in a smaller blast radius.

It's actually surprising how really small AoEs are in this game, heavy explosives are pretty damn lame all round, and come with extra hurdles in skill use and such. But hey, at least you can strap them together at significant effort for more damage and ignore DR on attached targets for highly controlled 1 square blast radius demolitions (in star wars the biggest explosions are apparently VERY neatly and tightly contained careful demolitions). But no matter how many you strap together the explosion never gets BIGGER.

Notably the bit where you can strap multiple explosives to the same target using the mechanics skill is not noted in the mechanics skill and it's rules on placing explosives on a target, while the explosives item section does mention that a good mechanics check can increase the damage dealt to things you strap explosive too it doesn't give you the actual details on that and just uses about half as much text as the actual rule itself to refer you to flip back and read it in the mechanics skill rules instead.

Armour and Fort Defense
It is worth noting, that in a further fuck you to characters attempting the whole elaborate condition track business that you can increase your fort defense (and thus the damage threshold for many if not most condition track progression effects) significantly simply by putting on the right armour.

The BEST such fort bonus from armour is from a god damned Light Armour at +5, and it's the second best light armour on the list with +5 ref defense and +4 max Dex so basically anyone who invests in light armour early game will want it.

But you can't buy it because fuck you it's part of the whole Yuuzhan Vong era bullshit no one (other than, apparently, the authors of various star wars d20 rule sets, not limited to this one) gives a fuck about.

Still there is at least one era in which there is a giant low level 1 proficiency feat light armour fuck you to condition trackers that is attached to a primary enemy of that era. Just for icing on the litany of fuck you's to condition trackers in the system.

Meanwhile in other era's its a smaller fuck you of the odd +2 or 3 here or there. But the best heavy armour is also a +4 to fort defense, and you can basically expect any armour wearer to be getting these bonuses on the side free while stacking up their reflex defense so damage thresholds will be going up.

There is totally a “To Wear Armour or Not?” Side bar. It pretty much admits that the reflex or armour thing is bat shit, that fort def bonuses are significant but eventually the armour instead of ref thing will be a bad trade off... doesn't seem to entirely grasp the whole thing where the improved armour stuff from soldier has high level thresholds before payoff, and then shrugs it's shoulders by largely just posing the “what the hell should you do about this kinda stupid conflict the system puts you in?” question and not providing ANY meaningful answer or advice on how the fuck to deal with it.

Data Cards Have Intelligence
Data cards are a data storage item with NO interface of any form for input or output of data. Which is a pretty crazy miswording in itself. But then it takes time to note that they have Intelligence 2. Because fuck, other computer items in the game have intelligence so a completely inaccessible non-interactive data card should totally have intelligence 2... for no particular reason... I guess it is really important to know that a USB peg they accidentally failed to give a way to access the data on is in fact as smart as a dog. It technically has implications for computer use access, but the DCs involved are so low they shouldn't have bothered and it's fucking static so it could have just been a hacking DC instead of animal intellect.

This carries through to some other data storage items that inexplicably get to have some intellect, I could almost see a few zany reasons for a holovid recording to have it's own independent intelligence, but the fact that it is no smarter than the average guinea pig pretty much renders that potential completely wasted. All it leaves you with is maybe a deeply unreliable proximity trigger for your recording and a weird preference for eating corn husks.

Electrobinoculars remind us of the conflict between stupidly long attack ranges and remarkably short perception ranges
You might want to get these so you have some chance of noticing the characters (somehow) attacking you from hundreds if not thousands of squares away, what with there normally being a -5 per 10 squares penalty on that. There is however still a -1 per 10 squares penalty so how the fuck anyone with a rocket launcher is even seeing targets at the maximum 500 square or -50ish penalty (even with Electrobinoculars) penalty is nobodies guess.

Breath Masks, Revenge of the Fuck You to Kel Dor characters
Notably Breath Masks require regular filter changes that require a mechanics check. It is an easy DC 10 mechanics check any character could do, untrained, by taking 10, if they don't have an intelligence penalty. Which would be nice so a Kel Dor as an organic character didn't suddenly need a fucking mechanic handy in other to survive.

But unfortunately mechanics is the only full “trained only” skill in the game so you actually need a fucking mechanic handy EVERY HOUR or your Kel Dor will fucking die.

Fuck You too Fish Men!
Yeah, all the large numbers of fish man character races who were all “ooh la de dah aren't we so good because we can breath under water!”. Well you can just buy an item for that.

Cybernetics Fucks With The Force
Because... wait. Luke AND Dark Vader had cybernetics, and they got penalties for using the force from that? Gee. Great. Whatever I'm sure there is some cannon expanded universe bullshit for this, but frankly Darth fucking vader should not be running around with a like -4 use force penalty or something just for being a bad ass cyborg and I don't give a crap about your lame midichlorian excuses.

FINALLY a god damn Jet Pack
And it is actually pretty damn good and really cheap. It's basically just standard move speed only with pretty much perfect hovering flight. For ten turns. With some provisos that basically don't matter (like don't land on the same turn you ran in the sky or you need to make a pilot check oooga booga!).

The existence of this item makes several other options officially now confirm their suckage in comparison.

Duct Tape
Is on the list, under a false name in a funny moustache, but it is on the list. So tiny kudos for tiny that at least.

For a Moment I thought Holsters might fix certain quick draw issues

Then they didn't.

Targeting Scopes
Let you take your -10 at 500 squares penalty on your rocket launcher against things you cannot possibly see down to a mere -5 by dropping the range category one step, but not creating a higher range category above the standard. But you have to aim first, at those enemies you cannot possibly perceive. Except with Farseeing. Which doesn't choose to tell you if it is LoS.

Encumbrance
I'm sure there is something crazy in here but at this point I can no longer be assed. And it's just encumbrance. As crazy as it often is. And everyone ignores encumbrance right?

(editor, me again, strikes back! : As it turns out later in the GM section it assumes you never actually DO encumbrance normally then tells you to enforce the encumbrance rules if PCs dare to go around looting stuff you don't want them to as a punitive measure. No really.)

Services And Expenses
Are sparse on details and miss various notable services mentioned in various skills and other rules text all over the book (so if you want a comprehensive list of actual services including Computer Use and Mechanics, fuck you apparently), this list is pretty much just medical care, dining, lodging, transportation vehicle rentals and upkeep per month.

Oh yes, that's right, Upkeep per month. 7 different luxury levels of it. Upkeep per month is apparently a thing, because hey fuck you, and a thing separate from the dining (daily) and Lodging (daily) and their different 4 levels of luxury. Because hey, why have the same options, (they inexplicably share names with only 2 out of the 4 levels of upkeep luxury, because why not?).

There is almost no text at all explaining the potentially massively important expenses mechanic, how mandatory it is, what the consequences are of living at a level under “impoverished” or indeed at any of the levels, and whether you are actually expected to pay monthly expenses AND pay for lodging and food per day or if monthly expenses cover that. But if monthly expenses don't primarily cover lodging and food WTF? Or if they DO cover lodging and food and are mandatory then WTF is the point of daily lodging and food costs. OR if they DO cover lodging and food but are NOT mandatory then also WTF. It's all just... THERE.
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Post by fbmf »

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
Last edited by fbmf on Sat Nov 08, 2014 12:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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