Star Wars Saga, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

[chaotix42]

A question: there is a sidebar in the Force Powers section on Choosing Your Force Powers. It mentions that low-level characters should take easy-to-activate powers, citing Force Stun as an example of a hard-to-activate power. It specifically says it has a "DC 20 (or higher)" check to activate. Looking at Force Stun however, there is no such DC listed. I looked elsewhere and couldn't find anything on baseline DCs for powers. Some have a table of effects, with more potent results the higher your UtF check is (15, 20, 25, etc.). The only power with a high starting DC is Sever The Force, starting at DC 25. All of the others are merely attacks against the different defenses with no minimum check level required to activate. What gives? Just an error, maybe? or am I missing something?

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

A question: there is a sidebar in the Force Powers section on Choosing Your Force Powers. It mentions that low-level characters should take easy-to-activate powers, citing Force Stun as an example of a hard-to-activate power. It specifically says it has a "DC 20 (or higher)" check to activate. Looking at Force Stun however, there is no such DC listed. I looked elsewhere and couldn't find anything on baseline DCs for powers. Some have a table of effects, with more potent results the higher your UtF check is (15, 20, 25, etc.). The only power with a high starting DC is Sever The Force, starting at DC 25. All of the others are merely attacks against the different defenses with no minimum check level required to activate. What gives? Just an error, maybe? or am I missing something?

Most likely just an error.

Of course, what constitutes a "high DC" depends on how the character is built. A 1st level Jedi with a high Charisma and Skill Focus (UtF) is going to find DC 15 to be laughably easy, and DC 20 not that far out of reach, making powers like Battle Strike, Force Slam, Force Thrust and Mind Trick frighteningly effective against opponents of similar levels.

 

[HeinorNY]

The good?
Changes in the Skills, condition track, most of The Force mechanics. Everything else thar remained the same from previous editions.

The bad?
The game is all about squares, miniatures and combat.
Most of the combat rules was dumbed down to a miniature-game level-of-simplicity.
Changes in combat messed around with most of the already balanced and solid rules from d20 system.
Also, as a personal opinion, I don't like all this enforced "heroic" thing. Charatcer should be and feel better than common people by their good choices and action, not because they are meant to be better. The same with being a hero.
The rules are too paternalistic, you gotta be real dumb to make a bad character. And all this paternalism is towards combat.
There no rules for travelling, the astrogation rules suck bigtime. there is almost no rules covering allthe stuff that happens outside of combat.

The ugly?
Have you ever played any Final Fantasy game? if yes, have you ever played the FInal Fantasy Tactics version? if yes, than think that the Saga edition could easily be called Star Wars Tactics too.
Also, the Dark Side is not what it used to be...

 

[Bagpuss]

I have to agree with Ainatan to some degree, the changes to combat seem not properly play tested. While making withdraw a move action is certainly going to lead to a more fluid flowing combats the repercussions of that don't seem to have been thought through.

Melee characters are going to find it near impossible to get a full attack action on someone, making Duel Weapon Mastery feats pretty near useless for them.

Why wasn't Dodge, changed when they simplified everything else? After all it's not like it would be over powered to have it improve your Reflex defense all the time.

No character is ever going to fall to the dark side because it's so easy to get rid of the dark side points, and so easy to see when you are in danger of turning. It doesn't have the temptation of earlier editions either. You could kill a village full of sandpeople, and then level up and pay off the dark side point debt.

 

[ValenarJaeldira]

No character is ever going to fall to the dark side because it's so easy to get rid of the dark side points, and so easy to see when you are in danger of turning. It doesn't have the temptation of earlier editions either. You could kill a village full of sandpeople, and then level up and pay off the dark side point debt.

This is why I am going to house-rule the Force-Point payoff as permanent. You need to get rid of a dark side point? Sure, then you only get 4+1/2 level Force Points from now on. The Darkside gets you power now, but if you ever want to come back from it, you will lose power later.

 

[Bagpuss]

Hmm interesting, I'd be tempted to rather than lose a force point, that force point is classed as dark side. Still available but if you ever use it, you gain an additional dark side point, thus next level you are 3+1/2 level and 2 dark side force points. Each time you gain a dark side point one of the force points you get on leveling up becomes tainted by the dark side.

 

[atomn]

A "Bad" in my opinion is adding the Bellow as a racial ability of Ithorians. I thought it was silly in the Clone Wars and making it now a racial ability is the kind of re-write that frustrates me about Episodes 1-3.

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

Most of the combat rules was dumbed down...

Would you mind giving a few examples of what you think has been dumbed down?

Also, as a personal opinion, I don't like all this enforced "heroic" thing. Charatcer should be and feel better than common people by their good choices and action, not because they are meant to be better. The same with being a hero.

I haven't read this section of the book, but I'd argue that being a PC automatically makes you "better" than most of the riff-raff in the galaxy.

The rules are too paternalistic, you gotta be real dumb to make a bad character.

Or just unfamiliar with RPGs and/or the d20 system? Even if this is the case, I don't understand why it's a bad thing. If it's easier to make bad characters, is that a sign of a better RPG?

And all this paternalism is towards combat.

I don't quite understand this statement. Do you mean that the paternalism of the rules guides people towards combat, or that the rules themselves are too focused on combat? In either case, I'd argue that combat is a huge part of the movies, so I'm personally ok with that being a major focus of an RPG with a design goal of specifically modeling the movies. But I also don't that as very different from 3.5.

There no rules for travelling, the astrogation rules suck bigtime. there is almost no rules covering allthe stuff that happens outside of combat.

Well I gotta agree that that is a pretty huge oversight. Space travel has always been an important part of the movies. Unfortunately, it's always moved at the ever-cliche "speed of plot" so I guess one could argue "Hey, in the movies, they got there when they got there," so hard and fast rules aren't that necessary at the moment. I'm personally with you and feel that's something we should have in the core book. Hopefully there will be some alternate rules for astrogation down the road.

 

[Plane Sailing]

No character is ever going to fall to the dark side because it's so easy to get rid of the dark side points, and so easy to see when you are in danger of turning. It doesn't have the temptation of earlier editions either. You could kill a village full of sandpeople, and then level up and pay off the dark side point debt.

An interesting alternative might be to either randomise the gaining of dark side points (1d3 at a time) or randomise the buying off of dark side points (each force point has a 50% chance? Make a Wis check vs total number of dark side points held? something else?)

I like the idea of randomised gaining of dark side points, so you really wouldn't know how close to turning you actually were...

 

[Henry]

You could kill a village full of sandpeople, and then level up and pay off the dark side point debt.

So a village of Sand People contains 5 + 1/2 your level inhabitants? I do see your point,though, especially because there are two conflcting sections on Force Pts for DSP's -- one says it takes a swift action, and the other says it takes quiet concentration and study, with the implication that it should happen off-camera. If you can dump your DSP's the second after you get them, it really is a poor trade-off; there is no down-side to taking Dark Side Force powers, because you can get one or two uses out of them with almost every adventure.

It is one section I'm thinking of house ruling, but I'm not sure just HOW strong I want to make it.