SW Saga Jedi Academy Training Manual

Remus Lupin · 20th May 2009, 05:39 PM

I received my copy yesterday and I've been browsing through it. If you're interested in playing Jedi, this is a very good book to have. It increases a number of the options that you have for playing jedi and other force-using characters significantly.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this book is the format: It's written as though it were an actual manual given to students at the Jedi Academy on Ossus. As such, it contains messages from the masters, holocron snippets, and "whispers from the dark side."

I haven't fully digested it yet. There are a few interesting new tweaks to what Jedi can do, new force powers, techniques, and secrets, as well as talent trees. I'll try to answer specific questions if you have them.

dm4hire · 21st May 2009, 11:24 AM

Thanks for posting about this. I haven't bought much stuff beyond the corebook and wasn't sure how it would end up being, but I may pick it up now as the format alone sounds worth reading.

Donovan Morningfire · 24th May 2009, 01:29 PM

I've had the book for just over a week now, and I have to say that I really, really, really like it. The front half is just loaded with crunchy goodness, and not just for Jedi, but also Force Adepts and Sith (Sith Alchemy is back and in full force!).

Rodney had said on an earlier Order 66 podcast that the Lightsaber Form powers were his way of "spicing up" the Form talents from the Jedi Knight PrC, and I think he succeeded admirably. The other Force powers run the gamut from "pretty darn spiffy" to "meh," although it seems there's a bit of naming confusion since this book as a Force Storm power that works entirely differently than the one presented in Force Unleashed.

The Regimens are neat. Not sure how I feel about having to spend a precious character feat slot (which might be better served in picking up Force Training), but the mechanical effects are interesting. I may just make them available to anyone with the Force Sensitivity feat and would have a reasonable chance to learn them.

There's some some very solid advice on how to play Jedi characters (not quite as good as what was presented in the old Power of the Jedi RCR book, but few things would be given the page count), as well as playing dark siders, and each of the Force Traditions presented gets a two-page layout with a handful of Force Tradition talents.

The sections on holocrons and training Padawans/apprentices are equally neat. One quibble with the Padawan section is there's no mention of what sort of ability scores they should have. I'm thinking the default 25pt buy since my games usually use 32pts for PCs; the Padawans are better than "average folk" but not quite on par with the PCs.

The only shortcoming that I've seen with the book is that quite a few of the NPC stat blocks are wonky to point of being rules illegal, with characters having levels in Force Adept but not qualifying for the PrC (i.e. No Force-based talents at all) being the biggest offenders. But since I don't buy these books for NPC stats, that's not as big a concern for me as it might be for others.

Remus Lupin · 24th May 2009, 08:06 PM

I'm in total agreement about the Regimes. I'd hate to waste a feat on them, but they are pretty cool. Too cool to just be a function of Use the Force, but not quite cool enough for the feat.

The problem is that there is a time cost to use these regimes, and you can only have one active at a time. The time cost isn't a big deal given the elasticity of time in a game environment, but it's only having one active that makes it tough to justify the feat for. Maybe it would be better if you had them as a suite like force powers.

possum · 27th May 2009, 04:45 AM

It's good, but my main problem isn't the crunchy parts of the character write-ups (I've always believed in the right to fudge stats for canon NPCs, but it does get a little out of hand) but the rest of it. There's some serious errors here, like Mon Mothma being possessed by Exar Kun's Sith spirit instead of being poisoned and Kieran Halcyon of 300 BBY being found on Luke's Praxeum in 12 ABY (getting him and Corran mixed up.)

Dragonblade · 27th May 2009, 07:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Donovan Morningfire

The only shortcoming that I've seen with the book is that quite a few of the NPC stat blocks are wonky to point of being rules illegal, with characters having levels in Force Adept but not qualifying for the PrC (i.e. No Force-based talents at all) being the biggest offenders. But since I don't buy these books for NPC stats, that's not as big a concern for me as it might be for others.

Honestly, I'd prefer if the stat blocks for NPCs were presented in a 4e format. I don't care whether a PC can build Darth Vader. He (and NPCs like him) only exist to be a challenge to PCs.

I have really come to dislike stat blocks that conform to PC rules and refer to lists of feats and talents. I don't have them all memorized, so I'm always looking stuff up in other books. I'd rather the stat block just say Vader can do X at-wll, or so many times per encounter, with +X to hit and dX +Y to damage, etc.

Its such a pain that I haven't really found the will to GM a SW Saga game even though I otherwise love it. And because I'm not running it, my players aren't playing it and aren't buying SW Saga products. 4e has spoiled me. A little more GM friendliness would go a long way, Rodney... Just saying.

Heck, just put out a SW Saga monster manual style book that collects all the various NPC and alien stat blocks and rewrites them in the 4e style. I'd buy that in a heartbeat.