Saga skills?

[The Souljourner]

Bear in mind that the Soldier gets 3 skills at first level, while the scoundrel (the closest to the rogue) gets 4, the scout gets 5, and the noble gets 6. It isn't a 2 vs. 8 like in D&D. Also, soldiers get 5 bonus feats at first level, while the rest only get 3 or 4.

Yeah, but the soldier's bonus feats are a lot more spread out that they would be in D&D. In D&D there's basically martial weapons and simple weapons. so, either you have the "I know martial" feat, or you don't.

The armor feats are a little more... you can have light, medium, or heavy.

Still... that whole "you don't get the basic proficiencies of the class" thing really bugs me about star wars too. Who wants to play a soldier who only knows one weapon? He just gimped himself for the rest of the campaign, because maybe he thought it made more sense to start as a scoundrel.

I really want D&D to try to get away from anything that causes the order in which you pick your classes to change your character in any significant manner. A rogue 1/fighter 1 should have almost the exact same stats as a fighter 1/rogue 1. In fact, if they could have the exact same stats period, I think that would be ideal.

-Nate

 

[SteveC]

Just seems like taking a level of rogue at first level will give you a big benefit for the entire life the character, whereas taking fighter first.... kinda doesn't. Yay, 12 hitpoints more than the rogue got... those get lost in the shuffle in the first 10 levels, but the rogue's skillpoints just keep on giving.

*shrug* Maybe it'll be more balanced than it sounds.

-Nate

Have to agree with you here: if you want a skill based character, you either start that way or spend all of your time catching up. In the demos of Star Wars that I ran, the players all eventually wanted to start off with levels of scoundrel or noble as a result. The balance was more than a little off. Still, it wouldn't be too hard to tweak, and if every class starts with the same number of feats (with skill training equal to a feat) it would be balanced.

The problem with Saga is that the classes don't quite balance out right, and I expect it's because some of them get access to a "better" skill list than others (acrobatics is one that comes to mind). I think that the trained skills list for 4E is going to be a very important part of the balancing aspects: in 3E having Spot or Listen as part of your class skills is something that was initially considered very powerful, but later classes from the splats had a lot more access to those skills. It's as if the initial design team failed to mention it to some of the folks who came after them. I hope that values of the skills that are "prime" in 4E is something that's carried forward in the splat classes.

--Steve

 

[drothgery]

Still... that whole "you don't get the basic proficiencies of the class" thing really bugs me about star wars too. Who wants to play a soldier who only knows one weapon?

It's probably worth noting here that Saga uses weapon groups, and every class except noheroic starts with at least two groups (simple weapons for everyone, pistols for everyone but Jedi, lightsabers for Jedi); soldier and scout add rifles. The only way to be a soldier with only one weapon or weapon group prof (or none at all) would be to start as a nonheroic.