Sell me on Star Wars D20

[Liquidsabre]

Let's face it... how can you go wrong with SW d20? After all, it's 14 better than the d6 version...

Be careful there mate, you don't want a discussion to erupt between d6 & d20, as there are a number of SWd6 fans that never made the switch and for some good reasons too.

 

[SSquirrel]

Be careful there mate, you don't want a discussion to erupt between d6 & d20, as there are a number of SWd6 fans that never made the switch and for some good reasons too.

But there were so many good reasons to switch. I always hated that in the d6 version once you got to about 5d6+1 it seemed like it was very rare for you to fail at anything. This happened rather quickly in our group.

Just an example

Hagen

 

[DeBracy]

Be careful there mate, you don't want a discussion to erupt between d6 & d20, as there are a number of SWd6 fans that never made the switch and for some good reasons too.

Thanks for the warning. Of course that's not how I meant it - I've only played Star Wars twice, first time was d6 with some nice GMing by my cousin, the second was a so-and-so d20 session. Hence I have no real oppinion which is better - I just hoped to be somewhat funny.

As Katowice pointed out however, SW d20 is the only SW roleplaying game on the market. This doesn't make the game better (or worse) but it's a lot more available than OOP d6 books. So far, I'm not helping Wehtam one bit but here's my try:

This game isn't at all bad - you've got lots of support for it - you probably already know most of the system and finally - a book is just a book. It's you as the GM that's the most important part! No matter which system you'd play with it's gotta start in your head. And a nice looking book like the revised SW d20 will most certainly put one or two ideas in there...

 

[jarlaxlecq]

bump cause i want to be sold on it too

 

[humble minion]

Selling points ... Combat is cinematic enough to be true to the genre, but deadly enough to keep PCs honest. Force users are really scary, but don't overshadow other characters. The NPC classes make running large numbers of bumbling thugs quick and painless. Lightsabers and starfighters are as cool as hell.

Some highlights from my game, cos although it isn't always smooth sailing, when it's good it's very, very good:
The hand-to-hand struggle between three wounded PCs and a monstrous, fanged alien bodyguard on a decrepit, hijacked aircar, as the PCs try to put some distance between themselves and a massive land juggernaut before the explosives they planted on its reactor explode...
Two Jedi and a Force adept surrounded by about fifty battle droids in the mansion of a corrupt noble, a combat that ended only when the Force Adept smashed a path clear with Force Strike, then the whole lot of them Force Jumped out a 200m-high window onto the boarding ramp of a just-arrived transport.
The fighter pilot getting bull (bantha) rushed off a ladder by a power-armoured soldier wearing a jet-pack, and falling hundreds of metres towards the sea - before quickdrawing his ascension gun and managing to catch himself with a natural 20 attack roll
The scoundrel and one of the group's main enemies (a corporate operative) kneeling next to one another in a Hutt's audience chamber, each frantically trying to save himself and convince the Hutt to kill the other guy...
The time that the Force Adept, badly wounded by the droid bounty hunter, unleashed her anger and burnt it to scrap with a blaze of force lightning - right in front of the Jedi...

 

[SSquirrel]

Selling points ... Combat is cinematic enough to be true to the genre, but deadly enough to keep PCs honest. Force users are really scary, but don't overshadow other characters. The NPC classes make running large numbers of bumbling thugs quick and painless. Lightsabers and starfighters are as cool as hell.

Some highlights from my game, cos although it isn't always smooth sailing, when it's good it's very, very good:
The hand-to-hand struggle between three wounded PCs and a monstrous, fanged alien bodyguard on a decrepit, hijacked aircar, as the PCs try to put some distance between themselves and a massive land juggernaut before the explosives they planted on its reactor explode...
Two Jedi and a Force adept surrounded by about fifty battle droids in the mansion of a corrupt noble, a combat that ended only when the Force Adept smashed a path clear with Force Strike, then the whole lot of them Force Jumped out a 200m-high window onto the boarding ramp of a just-arrived transport.
The fighter pilot getting bull (bantha) rushed off a ladder by a power-armoured soldier wearing a jet-pack, and falling hundreds of metres towards the sea - before quickdrawing his ascension gun and managing to catch himself with a natural 20 attack roll
The scoundrel and one of the group's main enemies (a corporate operative) kneeling next to one another in a Hutt's audience chamber, each frantically trying to save himself and convince the Hutt to kill the other guy...
The time that the Force Adept, badly wounded by the droid bounty hunter, unleashed her anger and burnt it to scrap with a blaze of force lightning - right in front of the Jedi...

Wow. See it's posts like that that make me wish one of my friends would run this game *grin* I even offered to loan the 5 or 6 SWd20 books i own to a friend so he can run it heh

Hagen

 

[robberbaron]

My twopenneth:

It's Star Wars!
It's d20 (hence fairly easy to learn)
It's Star Wars!

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Starship/Vehicle rules and combat are awful, and not terribly exciting- not to mention really tough to work on a gridboard without a lot more work than I'm willing to invest. Of course, I have seen some decent house rule improvements on the net, such as the chase system (that I think was on the DLOS website, but I'm not sure) that help improve this.

In my game, we've been in...five combats that involved starships, and one that involved a hovertruck being parked on a Hutt's head.

Our primary ship is a Small transport which is fairly heavily armed, being that we're bounty hunters roaming the Outer Rim. It was initially designed with two turreted quadlasers, 2 concussion missile launchers, and 6 fire-linked ion cannon. Now, it's been refitted with a Medium turbolaser forward, two turreted double turbolasers, 4 concussion missile launchers, and a turreted heavy ion cannon. So, my experience may be a bit...abnormal.

1) One of the soldiers took a turret and blew a shuttle out of the sky...said shuttle was doing Bad Things to the ship we were on, but he hit it a bit harder than he intended.

2) Run across a pirate ambush jumping in-system. We get initiative and hit first, they hit back, and then we full attack and rip their ship into tinfoil.

3) We get shot at by a CorpSec IRD going onto a planet. It bounces off the shields, and we land.

4) My character disables a Nebulon-IV frigate over Hoth with the turreted Ion gun; GM gave it stats as a heavy turbolaser, and I had the target to -5 Hull Points in two shots. I didn't brew it up since I felt kind of bad for blowing them all to heck without warning.

5) Last session, we were shadowing this freighter our Imperial contact asked us to keep an eye on, since he'd gotten word of a pirate ambush. Pirates appear in what appears to be an overwhelming display of force, about 50 Z-95s, which were awfully tough (DM-redesigned as part of the plot). "Freighter" starts spitting out TIEs of various types, and eventually situation stabilizes while we watch, mostly due to a 20-strong wing of TIE-Advances. Until the pirate's main ship appears, which is a Corellian Corvette with massive modifications (like, a HUGE sensor mask). It lays into the transport with a lot more firepower than normal until it has the transport streaming atmosphere, and then starts on the TIE Advances. We light up, and start a gun pass into its rear arc, not quite making it through the shields. One of its turrets engages us, and not only punches through our shields, but drives us into battle damage. At this point, the TIE Advances focus their firepower into the Corvette, knocking down its shields and damaging it a bit. Knowing that we've got this one chance, we pour all our fire into the Corvette, and are able to brew it up.

Now, lessons aren't necessarily applicable, but the main thing I've noticed is that most ships are fairly fragile, compared to the damage a reasonably-designed warship can put out. We haven't done that much maneuvering, preferring to end the combat quickly if we can do so; most of that maneuvering in the two actual ship-to-ship engagements was done to make sure the gunners could get good shots and/or place us outside of the enemy's main guns.

Brad

 

[d4]

Now, lessons aren't necessarily applicable, but the main thing I've noticed is that most ships are fairly fragile, compared to the damage a reasonably-designed warship can put out.

i think your ship is a bit atypical for a standard Star Wars group, at least in my experience.

the party in my current campaign has a modified yacht, with a medium ion cannon in a turret and some forward-mounted fire-linked light lasers. they also lack any shielding. so they can take on two or three starfighters, but it takes several rounds. anything more than that, like a half-dozen starfighters, or anything the same size as them or larger, and they've either got to run or they're in serious trouble.

another strike against the party is that (again, IME typical for a SW group) only one character has Starship Operation. he's the pilot, so the gunner lacks proficiency in starship weapons and is taking a -4 to attack rolls all the time. since this is a civilian ship, it doesn't have very good fire control systems and he's still attacking at below his BAB. couple that with the party still being low to middling levels and most starfighters have Defense scores in the mid-20s, and they are missing more often than they're hitting.

 

[humble minion]

Now, lessons aren't necessarily applicable, but the main thing I've noticed is that most ships are fairly fragile, compared to the damage a reasonably-designed warship can put out.

I'd definitely agree with this - to a point. Starship combat is a real problem.

Are you using the errata that doubles DR and hull points for all ships? It may help a bit. It does have its downside though, in that you can make what should be one-shot mooks a lot tougher than they should be (especially considering how incredibly high the Defence of a small, fast ship can be, but that's a rant for another time). For instance, the pilot PC in my game, in his very powerful (stolen...) experimental heavy fighter, is currently facing a bunch of droid starfighters and is having real problems. His lasers put out something like 8d10x2 damage, which is as high as I'm comfortable going for a fighter, but he still can't get a one-shot kill on the weakest fighter in the game without ridiculous damage rolls (and I've exempted the droid fighter from the double-hull-points thing). In the movies, fighters can only take one or two hits before blowing. Though admittedly if you simulate this accurately in-game, your fighter-pilot PC isn't going to have a lot of fun, or a long lifespan.

I haven't had much experience with larger ships yet, but I'm guessing they'll be very fragile. DRs around the 60-70 range will help capital ships a little against fighters, but against 5d10x10 turbolasers they might as well not be there. Still, in most RP campaigns big ships will be the exception. I'd much rather a solid set of rules for fighters and small transports, even if the capital ship rules were a bit flaky...