Interesting discussion. Not to hijack the thread, but does anyone have any good links on how to fix Saga issues?
I'm going to running Dawn of Defiance as my first dip into Saga rules later in the year. I'm goign to start making some character to familiarise myself with the rules, it will be our first non-dnd game in, maybe, 15 years..
There is really only one significant issue. For some groups. The
Skill Focus: Use the Force feat is viewed as too unbalancing by placing too much power in to a low level Jedi’s hands too quickly. It is, far and away, the best feat for any jedi to take. Whenever there is a feat that is absolutely the first “feat” to take without any debate about it, you know that the feat is too powerful. I don’t have that much of a problem with
Skill Focus:UtF, but many do and I understand their arguments and I can’t fault their reasoning.
If you do have an issue with
Skill Focus: UtF, I would suggest that the best fix is for the feat to be restricted to those who have at least one level in the prestige classes Jedi Master or Jedi Knight, only – or their corresponding brethren within the Sith. (You can make allowances for other Force Traditions prestige classes on an
ad hoc basis. Basically, this rule puts off the significant power increase in the overall skill bonus to
UtF until 8th level – which seems right to many GMs.
It does mean that jedi who are not Jedi Knights are
significantly less powerful. Of course, depending on where you sit on the argument, that might not be a bad thing at all.
With respect to
Dawn of Defiance, the main issues with that AP relate to the expansion books you may be using in your campaign. There is definitely a power creep at work in
SWSE over the course of the game’s development. While the creep is reasonably balanced across the classes (they all increase in power within an acceptable range, inter se, if all of the expansions are in use) the resulting increase in power then breaks the DoD AP if you don’t revise DoD to integrate the expansion material within it.
Short strokes: if you are going to let in a bunch of SWSE expansions – you need to revamp the NPCs and foes in the DoD campaign to compensate. IF you don’t, the PCs are going to blow through the combats in DoD as written too easily.
Simply put, when the rules used to make the NPCs are not the same as the rules used to make the PCs – problems can (and in this case, do) occur.
I also think the overall climax and final instalment in the DoD campaign is a letdown and is not “uber” enough – but that is a rules independent observation. The big mission at the end seems to me to be too trivial in many respects – or at least – it does not seem to be a big enough deal to cap off a lengthy AP. This is because the players KNOW that the Empire succeeds in their starship construction efforts because we've SEEN the result on screen in the movies. As a result, there is no sense of victory or having made a difference.
Of course, that's the problem with setting ANY Star Wars campaign within the Rebellion/Dark Times eras. The immediate future has already been written and we all know how it turns out. It's why I don't like the Rebellion/Dark Times era and far prefer the Knights of the Old Republic timeline -- or better still, the Old Republic era that is being depicted in the forthcoming MMO by BioWare.
That’s my take on DoD. YMMV.
