I got the saga edition

[Psion]

Dodge, which requires a 13 Dex, and only gives a dodge bonus of +1 to Ref save against the attacks of 1 attacker per round.

Why in the world would anyone take Dodge from among those 3 choices, except maybe because of its feat tree?

Indeed. Giving dodge a flat +1 bonus has been one of the most common house rules I've seen for various iterations of d20. Not so much for weakness, but when you have to decide which attacker it applies to every round, you just forget. I would have hoped they'd updated that one. :\

 

[Samurai]

Indeed. Giving dodge a flat +1 bonus has been one of the most common house rules I've seen for various iterations of d20. Not so much for weakness, but when you have to decide which attacker it applies to every round, you just forget. I would have hoped they'd updated that one. :\

Even then, though, the other 2 feats are better, since you get the +1 Ref AND either increase your unarmed damage or get +1 Fort and Will as well.

 

[ValhallaGH]

Also, what's up with the Ithorian's sonic bellow attack? I'd never heard of such a thing before.

You, sir, need to see the Cone Wars.

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

Why in the world would anyone take Dodge from among those 3 choices, except maybe because of its feat tree?

That's about the only reason people take Dodge under standard d20 rules. Comparered to the other two options, it's a distant third and only useful for qualifying for certain feats; don't recall right off hand if any talents require you to have Dodge.

 

[Odhanan]

The Dodge issue indeed can be put into perspective while considering this is a prereq to a tree. I don't remember if it's a prereq for particular talents though (and yeah, I received the Saga core book yesterday. Been reading it since the evening and am already into the Force chapter).

For the moment, I REALLY like what I'm reading. It's clear, well-written, I haven't seen any typo standing out yet, the introduction as to what role-playing is with an example of a game session is well-made... the rules are cleaned up, streamlined, straightforward. The feel is that it offers much more possibilities with less rules-bickering than Revised Edition... the change in the Force is nothing short of excellent... that's some really, really cool RPG we've got here.

 

[LostSoul]

Dark Side points are the same as always, they show how close one is to corruption. There's never been a "use" for them other than as a corruption tracker.

-TRRW

Maybe it was a house rule in D6. I used to let PCs call on the Dark Side whenever they felt like it in order to get a free Force Point (to spend right away).

 

[pawsplay]

That's about the only reason people take Dodge under standard d20 rules. Comparered to the other two options, it's a distant third and only useful for qualifying for certain feats; don't recall right off hand if any talents require you to have Dodge.

It's also dandy if you already have those other two feats. But besides the existing feat trees, there is plenty of room for more, and I don't see Improved Defenses opening up a bunch more trees. Still, there is a minor balance issue there. Somehow, Dodge didn't get visited by the "giving the people what they want" fairy.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Dodge Still Sucks - news at 11:00.

Actually, Dodge is even worse in Saga, where a) more combat is likely to be conducted at range than in D&D, b) the best feat in the former Dodge tree, Spring Attack, no longer requires it (Running Attack, its replacement, is much easier to get in keeping with the freewheeling nature of combat) and c) as mentioned above, other, better feats are available.

Other than the usual gripe with this particularly odd artifact of d20's past (as opposed to d20 Past), the new rules look absolutely excellent. Frankly, I can't imagine using any other d20 system as a base after reading this - not D&D, not True20, not d20 Modern. Maybe Mutants and Masterminds, but only for a very limited subset of campaigns. Saga looks that much better than its predecessors.

 

[SteveC]

Something that I just noticed is that you only start combat as flat-footed if there is a surprise round and you are unaware of what's going on. Otherwise, no one is flat-footed at all. Interesting change.

--Steve

 

[Felon]

I got it yesterday. It's pretty good from what I've seen, though there is a lot of stuff I really would have thought they'd change.

For instance, they STILL use freaking hit dice! At first level, you get a set number of HP, so it would've been simple to continue the progression, but they just can't bring themselves to do it.

The races are generally uninspired, as races tend to be. Ithorians are a pleasant exception (thank you Clone Wars!) They still want to keep ability score trade-offs pretty basic: Con for Dex, Dex for Con, or either one for any two mental ability scores.

I'm glad they provide examples for each of the class types in the class description. That's a little they can do to help those who are cutting their teeth on RPG's. Oddly enough, though, they provide pretty weak examples for the soldier class (Fetts, anyone?).