Star Wars Saga

[Spatula]

The skill system is very front-loaded*, and since force powers work off a skill, this makes force users disproportionately powerful to start. I'm sure lots of people have proposed fixes for this... one that just lept into my head would be to tie skill training and/or skill focus bonuses to your level: min (level, 5) basically.

* You can (and will, for valuable skills like Use the Force) have a +10 bonus before your ability modifier at 1st level. But those are one-time bonuses, and all your skills advance at a slow rate after that (1 rank per 2 levels).

 

[pawsplay]

The skill system is very front-loaded*, and since force powers work off a skill, this makes force users disproportionately powerful to start. I'm sure lots of people have proposed fixes for this... one that just lept into my head would be to tie skill training and/or skill focus bonuses to your level: max (level, 5) basically.

* You can (and will, for valuable skills like Use the Force) have a +10 bonus before your ability modifier at 1st level. But those are one-time bonuses, and all your skills advance at a slow rate after that (1 rank per 2 levels).

You can also houserule that Skill Focus has a prereq of level 3 or thereabouts.

 

[shaylon]

Force Disarm is a joke.

Why do you say this? What would you pick instead?

-Shay

 

[Nifft]

Why do you say this?

Look at the mechanic. How often do you think it's successful?

Cheers, -- N

 

[pawsplay]

Why do you say this? What would you pick instead?

-Shay

My nose. Seriously.

On the wizards boards, I showed that Darth Vader would be better off throwing his lightsaber as an improvised weapon to destroy Han's blaster than using force disarm. A character who can actually Throw Lightsaber would be categorically more effective at the same task.

Also, Move Object is easier, and does not appear to be forbidden as a way of grabbing an object.

 

[Henry]

My nose. Seriously.

On the wizards boards, I showed that Darth Vader would be better off throwing his lightsaber as an improvised weapon to destroy Han's blaster than using force disarm. A character who can actually Throw Lightsaber would be categorically more effective at the same task.

Also, Move Object is easier, and does not appear to be forbidden as a way of grabbing an object.

This is true -- force disarm is even harder to disarm with than just grabbing someone's gun by themselves. However, I'm curious to see if it becomes TOO good by just making it the same chance to do either.

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

Why do you say this? What would you pick instead?

-Shay

Move Object. Nowheres does it say that you can't use MO on an attended/held object, although you'd have to beat the target's Will Defense. Plus if you so desire you can dash the formerly held object against a wall, more than likely destroying it if not severely damaging it.

Worked pretty well for Move Object in the RCR, works just as well in Saga Edition.

 

[Armadillo]

My group, and some others, found that the list of Destinies was too limited, and we worked up additional Destinies: http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Star_Wars_Saga:_Main_Page

My character has been playing with the Revelation Destiny, which has been fun. I like that the hierarchy between Force Points and Destiny points so that often have to really decide when to spend a Destiny point.

 

[Crothian]

Move Object. Nowheres does it say that you can't use MO on an attended/held object, although you'd have to beat the target's Will Defense. Plus if you so desire you can dash the formerly held object against a wall, more than likely destroying it if not severely damaging it.

Worked pretty well for Move Object in the RCR, works just as well in Saga Edition.

According to the Rodney Thompson "Move object can only be used on unattended objects, not held items. If something is held, it must be disarmed."

So, I'll be going by that.

 

[Kaffis]

I've been playing in two Saga games in real life, running a PbP elsewhere, and am about to start a second PbP Saga game as a player.

I'm loving the system.

As for broken things/places with potential for abuse, here are the following things I've observed which would be good places for your GM to take a look at and decide whether he thinks it will (or may in the future after seeing how it shakes out) be houserule-worthy, along with the house rules I'm working on to address them.

- Skill focus on level 1 characters is very strong.
* I'm considering house-ruling my next game that skill focus' bonus cannot exceed your character level. This way, it's still a way to say "I'm better than just 'good' at this" at first level (i.e., it doesn't ban skill focus from a 1st level character outright) while easing them into the full power of the feat. I'd be more inclined to let it slide if skill focus UTF wasn't so versatile that it could, with an adequate wisdom score, be used against pretty much any kind of weakness in an opponent. Bonus effect: by removing the 12+ UTF checks from level 1 characters, my Jedi wouldn't feel like deflect was a de facto requirement as their level 1 talent.

- The system encourages multiclassing, but uses a lot of 3/4s BABs.
* I use fractional BAB for 3/4s levels, round down, so that multiclassers don't take the -1 hit if they don't carefully and deliberately plan out their level distributions.

- Starships and vehicles aren't adequately covered in the core book. There are a handful of example ships, and the rules for vehicle combat are fine, but players are dying to modify their ships and there's no guidelines, and I'm really dissatisfied with the thus-far-disseminated challenge level calculating rules.
* The Starships sourcebook is coming out soon, which should cover everything except encounter building, and maybe that, too. Worst case, we have to eyeball stuff and learn by doing.

- Force grip is disgusting in a one-on-one.
* Part of the retort is "don't set stuff up one-on-one!", but I don't buy that because Star Wars is about fighting outnumbered, to me. Even if you've just got one grippable boss and some mooks, the ability to trivially lock anybody out of combat 'till they're dead is way strong. I'm throwing in the requirement of a Force point to sustain it.

- Climb, Jump, and Swim didn't get consolidated, but everything else did.
* I consolidated them. Racial bonuses that grant re-rolls only apply to specific uses.