Do Star Wars Saga skill rules make d20 better?

[jonathan swift]

Why, oh why, would Joe Dirtfarmer from the deserts of Athas, or Tattooine, or Arrakkis/Dune, or whatever, who has never even heard of a body of water larger than his bathtub, be a better swimmer than Bob Swimmerguy from Hawaii, Mon Calamari, or whatever, just because Joe Dirtfarmer is 12th-level while Bob Swimmerguy is a 1st-level Olympic swimming champ-in-the-making? Or more knowledgeable about random trivia and occult lore than Tim the Wizard just because Tim is 3rd-level at the time?

*slaps that absurd level of excessive abstraction with a dead fish*

To me that is much more a problem of a level based system than of SAGA itself.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I dont like the removal of points, I do like the combination of skills however. If they ditched CC skills for 4th edition and made Int bonuses retroactive, I think people's support for a rankless skill system would drop.

 

[The_Gneech]

I do wish there was some kind of cross-class option. Perhaps the "Skill Training" feat applies to any skill but cross-class only give a +2 bonus, or somesuch.

-The Gneech

 

[I'm A Banana]

Why, oh why, would Joe Dirtfarmer from the deserts of Athas, or Tattooine, or Arrakkis/Dune, or whatever, who has never even heard of a body of water larger than his bathtub, be a better swimmer than Bob Swimmerguy from Hawaii, Mon Calamari, or whatever, just because Joe Dirtfarmer is 12th-level while Bob Swimmerguy is a 1st-level Olympic swimming champ-in-the-making? Or more knowledgeable about random trivia and occult lore than Tim the Wizard just because Tim is 3rd-level at the time?

In part because if you're a 12th-level dirtfarmer, you've had to bullseye more than a handful of wamprats.

And if you're an Olympic Swimming Champ in the Making, you're probably more than 1st level.

Levels represent increased skill and experience. If you have a lot of skill, overcome a lot of significant challenges and threats to life and limb, you're high level. If you don't, you're low level. Joe Dirtfarmer can't just know how to farm dirt REALLY WELL if he survives 'till 12th level. He got there with challenging encounters, presumably a variety of them, presumably on places that aren't his dirt farm. Similarly, Bob Swimmerguy, if he's 1st level, ain't now Olympic contender. He can't swim rapids, he can't long-distance swim the ocean, he can't swim tied to a rabid polar bear....he's got nothin'.

 

[ZSutherland]

So while in SAGA you can start off as an expert in something, you never improve and in fact get worse against similar levelled opponents. This seems counter intuitive to how levelling works in D20 games. It seems odd to me that my best chance of success with a skill is when I'm 1st level.

SAGA skill system works when you are mainly using your skills against much weaker mooks, which reflects the Star Wars genre resonably well, but doesn't necessarily work so well in D&D when you tend to face similar ranked opponents more often.

*above bolding is mine*

On the whole, I agree with your point, Bagpuss. I think the Saga skill system would not be at all beneficial for D&D specifically. I can, however, also see a fantasy game that isn't laden down with the heavy tropes and traditions (both good and bad) of D&D making excellent use of such a system.

However, a friend of mine (a bit of a twink) had the same gripe as you do about getting relatively "worse" at skill use against even level competition over the course of levels. We talked it over for about 4 hours. It doesn't "reflect the Star Wars genre reasonably well." It fits it nearly perfectly. The heroes in Star Wars spend most of their time dealing with mooks (stormtroopers and the like), and here their particular skills work pretty well. They easily bluff the Imperial soldiers after arriving on the Death Star in Ep. IV with nothing more than stormtrooper outfits and a flimsy story about a defective comlink, but have a much harder time with the detention center guards (who probably have perception as a trained skill), so the encounter degrades to combat where the heroes have the advantage. Finally, a much higher level Luke fails miserably on his Persuasion check against Jabba after going to some trouble to ensure a circumstance bonus (gifting Jabba with the droids and appealing to his vanity), and so again the encounter degrades to combat.

Yoda and Dooku have a similar encounter towards the end of Ep. 2. They pit their Force skills against one another, realize that they can't really do anything to each other that way, and default to lightsaber combat as the only way to decide the issue.

This happens again and again throught out all the movies and quite a bit of the EU that I've read (mostly just the Zahn novels).

Also, I think the slower progression of skills is fitting for Star Wars (though not from D&D). I told my friend he was thinking of it too much as D&D in space. This is not really a game where your characters go from miserable wretch to demi-god between 1 and 20. This is a game where at 1st level, nearly all heroic characters are at least generally competent at a wide variety of tasks and skills (just by nature of ability bonuses and untrained checks), and expert (perhaps highly expert w/ SF) at a few skills. From here, there's not a whole lot of room to get better.

Take a level 1 non-heroic character with a 12 dex (so, your very average twi'lek). His trained skill is stealth (he's a footpad) and he took Skill Focus as his first level feat. His bonus at level 1 is +11. He is not trained in Pilot, but we assume he can do average tasks such as drive an airspeeder in normal traffic conditions. He has a Pilot bonus of +1 for tasks that can be performed untrained. Somehow, our non-hero manages to make it to level 20. His Stealth bonus is now +21 (we'll assume he put all his ability boosts elsewhere for some reason) which is a 47.62% improvement. His Pilot bonus is +11 - a 90.91% improvement. The disparity is because he was already near the top of the Stealth curve at level 1 for his size and a non-hero, whereas he had lots of room to improve as a pilot.

This is very divergent from D&D's "You're level 1. You suck at everything and it will be a miracle if you survive to level 2" advancement feel, but that doesn't make it bad. Just makes it bad for D&D.

 

[Desdichado]

I don't know about better, but certainly it's more to my taste. :shrug:

 

[Jhaelen]

From what I've read about the Saga skill system there are a few things I like (grouping skills, getting rid of some odd ones, which were rarely useful) but all in all I don't see the point.
I never had problems with the D&D skill systems, it's the one aspect of character creation/advancement that is the easiest to do:
There's three settings for skills:
1) maximize a skill
2) put 5 ranks in it for the synergy bonus
3) put as many ranks in it as are required for a feat or prestige class
That's it - easy!

What IS giving me headaches in D&D are the feats - these are in dire need of some streamlining/simplification!
Preferrably by grouping them appropriately and assigning some kind of level to them to measure their power and make them comparable (see Iron Heroes or the ToB maneuvers). I'd really like to get rid of those completely arbitrary prerequisites and differences in power.

 

[GreatLemur]

1) high level heroes have some degree of competence at a lot of things

Yeah, that's actually the part I've got a problem with this system (well, that and some of the skill consolidation). I really don't dig the idea of characters just getting better at everything as they level up, regardless of whether it's something they've had any sort of training or experience in. That's just a believability-breaker, for me.

 

[comrade raoul]

That and currently it doesn't seem that balanced. If it's opposed by other skills then it seems pretty balanced, but when used against attack values or defenses then you can almost but certain of success at low levels (due to the +10 bonus with Training and Focus), but find success tough at high levels (due to those increasing by level, but skills only increasing by 1/2 level). So it seems against equal opponents you actually get worse as you increase in level.

I'm really bothered by this too, but I think there's a simple fix. I know people don't like the let-me-pimp-my-house-rules links, but I really think this is an issue and I'd be interested in thoughts.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Yeah, that's actually the part I've got a problem with this system (well, that and some of the skill consolidation). I really don't dig the idea of characters just getting better at everything as they level up, regardless of whether it's something they've had any sort of training or experience in. That's just a believability-breaker, for me.

Any particular reasons why it is a believability breaker?

I'm asking since D&D (and other class/level systems) have built in scaling competence - e.g. the high level sage with a better BAB than a low level fighter and more hit points than a heavy warhorse, even though he's just sat in the library all his life...

The saga model actually brings skills into the same kind of logic as BAB, hit points and saves - those all scale automatically with level, so why shouldn't generic skills?