D&D 4E Star Wars Saga Edition as preview of 4e?

[Brian Gibbons]

I don't know how everybody else builds their characters, but I don't really do the max-the-important-skills-and-ignore-the-rest thing. I tend to give my characters very varied levels of ability in different skills, according to what seems appropriate.

Moving from skill points to a binary "you've got it or you don't" system makes skills a hell of a lot less fine-grained, and it sounds like it might eliminate the "color skill" practice (that is, when you toss two points into Perform (whistling) just for kicks) by making skills a more carefully-rationed resource.

It does, but it's easy to slip in a house rule: "Instead of training in a skill, you may instead allocate a +5 bonus between two or more skills in which you are untrained (giving, for example, a +1 bonus to five different skills, a +4 bonus to one skill and a +1 bonus to another, or any other possible permutation). You are not considered trained in these skills, and you lose this bonus if you ever become trained in these skills."

This allows for the PCs who want something like a rank of Profession (farmer) or Craft (gourmet meals).

It's a lot easier to go from a binary "trained or untrained" system to a more fine-grained one, than the reverse.

Personally, the biggest impact of this change would be for high-intelligence PCs with Knowledge (all) as a class skill, as it's not uncommon for such PCs to have a few ranks in each Knowledge skill besides the one they're specialized in, to be able to at least make a Knowledge check about almost anything they run across.

 

[Warbringer]

"Not to mention that some of us still enjoy rolling up stats"

Then roll the stats and keep only the mods... It's what we do. Keeps the fun of rolling. For newbies it's intuitive for Str+3 to be, well, Str +3. Now me, an ole' gronard, I end translating back to "Oh, that's like a 16-17 Str"

 

[Warbringer]

The problem is that it ISN'T fun for him. He complains bitterly about it every single time he levels up. He actually hates keeping track of all of the skills, but he likes playing the "dashing rogue" type. He vacillates between skills that fit his "dashing rogue" concept and skills that he thinks will actually be "useful" in the game. (like Bluff).

There is a nice little rule option in the DMG that allows a character to have all his class skills equal to his current level+stat bonus.

He should try it

 

[WhatGravitas]

funny you should bring this up. Every time I use 5' increment y have converted them to 1,5 meters to actually grasp what the distance represents.

The RCR base of 2m always bothered me, since I was already used to 1.5 m, and a 2mx2m square is a huge area.

Additionally, using 1.5m isn't hard. And we metric editions (like the German D&D) use it all the time. It's not hard at all, believe me.

 

[Desdichado]

Just looking over the last few pages, evidence suggests you're just in a contrary frame of mind, but please tell me of these games where characters are just constantly getting takebacks.

Because I disagree with you I'm just in a contrary frame of mind?

And I just did tell you about "these games where characters are just constantly getting takebacks"--it's a very common feature of Blood Bowl. Each team gets a certain amount of rerolls each half of the game, and there are a number of skills (although they're more like feats in d20) that allow individual characters to reroll all kinds of actions.

In any case, you called it a takeback, not me. That's not how it works at all in Blood Bowl, and I'd wager not in Star Wars Saga either; if you wiff a dice roll, you can utilize the feat to roll it again, taking the second roll even if it's worse than the first is typically how it works. You don't get to change your mind and not to the action at all, though.

 

[Desdichado]

Which you replied with in reference to the idea that it might take someone brand new to the game 3 weeks to fully flesh out an 18th level character. I'm not sure why that would be mind-boggling - newbs can take hours to make a 1st level character, let alone an 18th level character.

Ah, got it. That does make more sense. I'm not mind-boggled that someone could or even would take that long to make a character, I'm mind-boggled that it's been pretty much stated as a fact by some in this thread that it's required to spend a minimum of three hours to stat up a reasonably high level character fully.

Just because I said I've statted up a 16th level character in 15 minutes doesn't mean that's what I always do; I just held that out as an example against the statement that you must spend ...I dunno, an hour, or whatever minimum folks here are throwing out. I'm sayin' that ain't so. You can but you don't have to.

 

[Nyeshet]

I think what's being done to the Star Wars RPG is to try to make it more like *Star Wars*, to emulate the feel of the movies. I don't think what's being done in this new edition necessarily has anything to do with changes which might be in a (theoretical) new D&D edition.

That's likely true.

However, if it works and seems popular with the D&D fans then I imagine they will strongly consider such changes for 4e.

 

[Korgoth]

Just because it works reasonably well doesn't mean it's that good.

That's pretty much the definition of good.

I admit that 3e has settled on the archetypal party of fighter, mage, rogue and cleric. But IIRC, OD&D only had the fighting man, magic user, and thief. The "cleric" came along later as a hybrid between fighting man and magic user.

Actually, OD&D had Fighting Man, Magic User and Cleric. The Thief came along in Supplement I: Greyhawk.

 

[Nyaricus]

Practiced Warrior - Add +1 to your Base Attack Bonus. Total BAB can't exceed your level.

Practiced Spellcaster - The number of spells you know and can cast, in addition to your caster level, increases as if you had gained a level in a spellcasting class of your choice. You may only take this feat if your caster level is less than your character level.

I like you These are sweet!

 

[Nyaricus]

I love the new skill system! Please, please bring that to D&D!

I just wet myself at reading that article. Oh man....