Star Wars Saga Edition?

From what I've heard, the Star Wars Saga Edition is supposed to have rather different rules than the previous editions.

So what are the big differences?

It's best to check out the WotC "Saga Edition Previews." They do a very good job of covering the bases.

Preview 1: Character Classes and Character Creation (Talent Trees, condition track, etc.)
Preview 2: Skills (no ranks, only trained or untrained with other ways of specialization)
Preview 3: The force
Preview 4: Combat (more on condition track, swift actions, etc).
Preview 5: Advanced Combat
Preview 6: Droids
Preview 7: Combat example (at the Sarlacc pit)
Preview 8: Starship and Vehicle combat

Better, faster, stronger.

But, seriously, the goal of the designers was to increase the speed of play and better simulate a heroic fantasy-in-space setting. Character creation is simplified without sacrificing much in the way of detail. Crunchy rules that slowed down play or created needless roadblocks were eliminated.

It's a very good system and I think it will set the tone for future D20 products. I'll be running my third Saga game tomorrow and we're all having a great time.

Jürgen Hubert said:

So what are the big differences?

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1/ More like d20 Modern than D&D.

2/ General competence increases by level (like it or not); specialization is accomplished via feats & talents.

3/ It is liquid awesome drizzled over lightly toasted solid awesome.

One of those is my humble opinion.

Cheers, -- N

I never played the first two editions, so I can't answer your question exactly.

But I have played in a demo of SAGA Edition, and I can tell you the feel is very cinematic -- very fast-paced and smooth. Our GM took a SW 2nd Edition mini-adventure and modified it for SAGA. In 3 hours of actual play, we had 5 combats and still had time for some role-playing and several skill checks.

For our next demo, we're going to try out the spaceship combat rules.

I really enjoyed it. The classes all seemed pretty balanced with each other. Our Jedi was able to do some spectacular acrobatics and covered a lot of ground, but as far as actual fighting, the soldier, the scout and the scoundrel were all just as effective during combat.

I heard they made Red-Eyes an iconic character. Apparently he makes piles of cash by buying blasters, disassembling them, and selling the component parts.

Jürgen, if you can dig up the "i have star wars saga!!!" thread over at Rpg.net posted by Grubman, you´ll learn everything you´ll ever need to know about SAGA. Then you can hunt for his "Star Wars SAGA - one mans journey" thread in which he creates his first SAGA adventure. All your questions will be answered. I know mine were.

Fifth Element said:

I heard they made Red-Eyes an iconic character. Apparently he makes piles of cash by buying blasters, disassembling them, and selling the component parts.

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Hey, it's not as if invincible armor comes cheap!

(Aside: I was amused a couple of years ago to discover that bicycles cost less than the sum of their parts.)

ephemeron said:

(Aside: I was amused a couple of years ago to discover that bicycles cost less than the sum of their parts.)

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There's more money in cars, but you also need a larger facility.

Cheers, -- N

Jürgen Hubert said:

From what I've heard, the Star Wars Saga Edition is supposed to have rather different rules than the previous editions.

So what are the big differences?

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I'll try to give you a summary.

1) characters start with a feat at 1st level and every even level (and a feat at 3/6/9etc as normal), thus giving heroic characters more feats to play with.

2) characters have talents every odd level. Different classes have different talent trees, so you can think of these as ultimately configurable class abilities. Two jedi, two scoundrels, two nobles could look completely different from their opposite number.

3) No skill ranks. Everyone gets to make skills at d20 +(level/2); you have a certain number of trained skills (depending upon class for no. and choice) which get +5 on this roll. You can take skill focus feat for an additional +5. Ability bonus is added as normal. This means that you can have very competent low level characters (+10+ability bonus at 1st level!) but a 20th level character would have that level of competence in everything and could be up to +20+ability bonus in trained and focussed skills

4) There is one 'Use the Force' skill which can do some things untrained, more things if trained, and is used to (typically) activate force powers.

5) The force. How good you are depends upon your Use the Force (Cha) skill, and whether you are trained and skill focussed. You use feats to gain (1+Wis bonus) force powers, which are your 'force suite' (you can take those feats multiple times). There are exceptions but you basically get to use each of your force powers once per combat, which helps to duplicate the feel of the movies much more (where people typically don't spam off the same attack over and over again).

6) The Condition Track. Damage over a certain threshold value moves you down the condition track, giving you penalties to skill use and other stuff. The penalty basically goes (from memory) -1/-2/-5/-10/KO'ed. You can take recovery actions to move yourself up the condition track too. The neat thing is that this encompasses all kinds of conditions (there are persuasion skills that can move you down the condition track, poisons do, diseases do, fatigue does... it really unifies all kind of things). Applies to vehicles too, which is nice.

7) No saving throws. You have a Reflex defence, a Fortitude defence, a Will defence. Attacker rolls to overcome the appropriate defence. e.g. shoot at someone and you have to overcome their reflex defence to hit them. Poison them and the poison strength attacks their fortitude defence. These are not the droids you are looking for? make a use the force check against their will defence. That kinda thing. Drop a grenade in the midst of a bunch of foes? one attack roll matched against all their reflex defences.

Those are the big differences that immediately come to mind.

Helpful?