Recent Star Wars Saga chat session with designers

[ssampier]

Therefore, is this edition D&D 3.75 (with Star Wars characters)?

I must say I am concerned about the skill points. Everything else seems okay.

 

[Nadaka]

I really never liked those systems where everyone has the exact same skills. While I can see combining some skills, doing away with player choice in the selection of ranks is IMO a bad design decision. If I do get it, it will be the first thing I houserule.

But I must say, I like the idea of class talents, its one of the best features of d20 modern and I am looking forwards to how they implement them.

One of the selling points in favor of W/VP for me has always been that chance of someone being taken down by a mook. While it may not work well for starwars, it certainly works well in my d20 modern games where you should think twice before provoking a punk with a 9 mil.

 

[RodneyThompson]

I really never liked those systems where everyone has the exact same skills. While I can see combining some skills, doing away with player choice in the selection of ranks is IMO a bad design decision. If I do get it, it will be the first thing I houserule.

Everyone won't have the exact same skills. There are still several factors that go into determining what your skill bonus is. We have just done away with skill points.

I'd like to ask that everyone that is so up in arms about this change actually try out the new system before declaring it a "bad design decision." There are a lot of reasons we went that route, and I think it works just fine in the context of the game.

 

[Shalimar]

Everyone won't have the exact same skills. There are still several factors that go into determining what your skill bonus is. We have just done away with skill points.

I'd like to ask that everyone that is so up in arms about this change actually try out the new system before declaring it a "bad design decision." There are a lot of reasons we went that route, and I think it works just fine in the context of the game.

When all you have is dribs and drabs that change the things you happened to like, patience is hard to come by. Everyone is very excited, so asking us to hold off judgement for half a year is hard.

 

[Morgenstern]

I'm just curious how this new skill system interacts with multi-classing... How fast does a Mastered skill drop to trained?

 

[Psion]

Classes are made up of multiple talent trees, meaning smaller numbers of classes can make more broad character archetypes.

This alleviates some of my concerns.

Still not wild about the idea of making nixing force adepts and making them into "other classes with a dabbling of force feats."

 

[Psion]

Seems to me, it boils down to, "A lot of people had to houserule how critical hits worked with vitality and wounds, so instead of fixing the way critical hits work, we're chucking out vitality and wounds altogether and switching to a completely differnt variant on hit points."

Doesn't seem to be the best of logic, there.

Yeah. AFAIAC, VP/WP fixes no less than four major problems with HP, and it's a fundamentally good system.

Of course, it sounds like they may be hitting some of the same weakness with the damage track thing, I just hope it doesn't complicate things and that it handles mooks as slickly as SC 2.0 (tall order, I think. But possible.)

 

[Pbartender]

Yeah. AFAIAC, VP/WP fixes no less than four major problems with HP, and it's a fundamentally good system.

Of course, it sounds like they may be hitting some of the same weakness with the damage track thing, I just hope it doesn't complicate things and that it handles mooks as slickly as SC 2.0 (tall order, I think. But possible.)

To me it's just looks like they're replacing one moderately complicated system with known, but fixable, problems with a different moderately complicated system with just as many potential unknown problems.

I'm skeptical, but curious to see how it works.

After all, I have been known to make mistakes... from time to time...

 

[RodneyThompson]

Still not wild about the idea of making nixing force adepts and making them into "other classes with a dabbling of force feats."

Not to start an argument, but it's not quite that simple. There's a couple of layers of mechanics we've not yet mentioned.

Still, if you want every one of your non-Jedi Force users to be Force weapon/talisman-using rubes with the ability to understand lots of languages, nothing is going to stop you from doing that in the new system.

I wish I could say more, but I can't.

 

[RodneyThompson]

Yeah. AFAIAC, VP/WP fixes no less than four major problems with HP, and it's a fundamentally good system.

Of course, it sounds like they may be hitting some of the same weakness with the damage track thing, I just hope it doesn't complicate things and that it handles mooks as slickly as SC 2.0 (tall order, I think. But possible.)

First of all, as a purely academic exercise I'd love to know what your four major problems with HP are. Just curiousity there.

And yeah, VP/WP is a good system. That doesn't mean its necessarily the best fit for Star Wars, though. I like the system, but I think the new system works better at creating fast, cinematic combat that mirrors what we see in the movies.