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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pawsplay" data-source="post: 4623626" data-attributes="member: 15538">In WEG, Force users started off slightly weak, because they gave up attribute dice for their Force skills. In that sense, the lightsaber is almost a consolation for being a little less awesome overall. However, Force users pick up a fair amount of ability. In the Rebellion era, advancement is slow going, as it is difficult to train without a teacher. In other eras, it can be pretty fast.There is an important break point, and that's 7D. At that level, I can do anything with a Difficult rating without sweating. I can do TWO actions of that difficulty with about even odds of succeeding at each. Alternatively, I can power up some of the more impressive Force powers in one round. Basically imagine a D&D wizard who could suddenly apply Metamagic feats willy nilly with only a minor increase in spell level, and you have some idea of what to expect. On the plus side, Darth Vader and Count Dooku can be built with 12D or less in each of their Force skills and do everything you see on screen. The powers are actually balanced pretty well, on a use-by-use basis. The big problem with them was that they tended to get over-used. Flying? Enhance Ability, then pilot. Badly wounded? Endure Pain. And so forth. Characters could do stuff all day. Whereas major force use always looked impressive in the movies. Starting with 2nd edition, the game became saddled with a goofy Dodge mechanic, which basically slashed difficulty numbers in half a lot of the time. I think it took things a little farther away from what we see in the movies. Still, it does speed things up a bit. It's goofy because you can still add your whole Dodge roll if you take a total defense. Since 2e also introduced the Wild Die, it kind of fixed the problem twice, where it was hard to hit people at medium range. Not so great.2e pretty much was no good. 2e Revised, however, took 2e and made it simple again, which was the root of what made it a great game. It left the Wild Die and the Dodge changes in place, which then migrated to the WEG D6 family of games. D6 vs. Saga1. Skill use - D6 wins. Good dice for heroic characters in general and no untrained skills made WEG feel very heroic. Princess Leia can copilot, young Kenobi can repair a hyperdrive, and Qui Gon can sneak. The only things you have to have a skill for in D6 are Advanced Skills, like surgery or building starships.2. Combat flow - A toss up. WEG was more action-oriented and tended to flow better, but fights usually ended in a few hits. Saga is more rigid and less overall fun, but easier to balance. Saga is a bit easier to powergame, since damage in the D6 game was fairly static, except for Lightsabers, which would pretty much kill you anyway.3. Combat deadliness - Both are insufficiently lethal. 4. Jedi - D6 made it easy to build and run Jedi of varied talents while still leaving a lot of room for customization. Saga tends to focus on the Force suit, with Use the Force picking up some slack with minor uses of the Force. In D6, Powers get used too much, while in Saga they are artificially limited, often in ways that don't make sense. Powers in D6 were more versatile and holistically defined, which I count as an advantage. Powers in Saga are more balanced with other characters. Advantage: Saga wins, by a hair.5. Aliens - D6 aliens that were too much unlike humans were pretty badly defined. Wookiees were all right, but Mon Calamari had a bunch of modifiers about being humid or dry, Ewoks had a wonky skill mechanic, and so forth. Since D6 has neither Feats nor a Merit/Flaw system, aliens were hard to balance. Saga wins.6. Cutting off hands - Both systems use clunky rules hedges to allow Jedi to purposefully maim someone instead of killing them. Neither has good crippling or amputation rules.7. Written content - D6 had much better writing. In fact, a lot of the EU stuff originated in classic WEG products. Saga tends to be more breezy, a bit looser with established canon, and in general less well researched.8. Starship combat - Both Saga and D6 have good systems, a toss up. They use almost interchangeable statistics: Fire Control/Int, for instance. 9. Reasons to act like it's Star Wars - WEG wins. The way Force Points work, the kind of modifiers you get in combat, the scaling of difficulties, the use of Character Points, and all the rest were set up to encourage swashbuckling adventure. Saga does pretty well, but basically holds its breath. A lot of good moves in Saga are special powers or just very difficult.</blockquote>

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