Star Wars Saga Edition [SECR] Preview #3 is Up

[Henry]

Ahh but you are missing one minor detail. Its 1 minute per power used. So, if you blew off 6 powers, you get one back a minute over a 6 minute period of resting. Not a huge deal, but certainly not enough time for you. Of course, its an easy house rule to drop in a 10 minute wait per power to return. I kind of like the effect, its sort of like D&D spell casting but not per day.

When a character uses a Force power...That power is now considered spent and can't be used again. Force-users regain their Force powers by resting for one minute outside of combat, activating special talents, spending Force points, and a variety of other means.

If that's the way it works, I read that as, "you rest for a minute, you get them all back."

Admittedly, I was just earlier (while I was writing my long-winded post) thinking that one house rule would be to extend that recovery time to an hour or more - maybe one power per hour, or something like that, to emulate the longer recovery times of the original rules. I imagine you could extend that, but it remains to be seen how badly that would affect the rest of the rules.

A marathon-runner can't... but Indiana Jones could. A marathon-runner can't... but Conan could.

For that matter, why can a fighter, a physical character who is thus somewhat related to realism, go all day, every day - but a wizard, whose powers are completely divorced from reality, can't?

Your plausible-meter could use some adjusting, methinks, if it buys 'shooting fireballs from your hands' and 'being able to fight with a sword all day long without getting tired,' but not 'being able to shoot fireballs every few minutes.'

Even Indiana Jones had to rest - heck he rested instead of makin' sweet love to Marion Ravenwood on the tramp steamer because he was so bone-tired!

And D&D fighters going all day usually doesn't come up - and when it does, I've always adjusted for that, too. It's beyond suspension of disbelief for me that a fighter could slug away for a hundred rounds of combat and not get fatigued or exhausted. After a hundred rounds of continuous fighting, they become fatigued. After 200, they become exhausted. Usually, it's never come up, because the spellcasters are encouraging retreat before that point. Even that length stretches plausibility, but I'm okay with it. Like I said, a few hours is one thing -- one to five minutes later? That's a different ballpark to me.

And to be honest, I've never seen good fantasy where someone was using their powers full-tilt, all day, every day, they way that a martial adept or factotum could. In Lord of the Rings, they had to rest; in Star Wars, they had to rest; in Indy Jones, they had to rest; non-stop action gets boring to me, after a while.

 

[nerfherder]

By the way, the 13 hit points probably means the nonheoric characters ONLY get 1 hit dice, like they did (basically) in Star Wars as it stands now. It's an easy mistake to advance an NPC the same way you would a PC, especially since you would in other d20 games. I'm willing to bet that 13 hit points comes from only 1d10.

A bit difficult without a CON bonus...

 

[Henry]

A bit difficult without a CON bonus...

Ah, well - guess we'll have to wait a month and see!

 

[iwatt]

A bit difficult without a CON bonus...

but toughnes?

+3 hp is a staple

 

[nerfherder]

Ah, well - guess we'll have to wait a month and see!

True - although I enjoy the speculating, as long as it's not taken too seriously. I've already seen something in the stats that I thought "Oh, I wish they hadn't done it that way", then it turned out that it was a typo, so I'm going to reserve judgement until I have the book in hand.

 

[Sir Brennen]

Info regarding typos, from the WotC boards:

For those wondering, these previews were being worked on during the final phases of development, so any errors in stat blocks are just the result of out-of-house people (like Gary and Sterling) not having the most updated versions of the rules, and then trying to go back and revise them. As with any radically new system, it takes a few tries to grasp all the nuances of the system (made even more difficult by the fact that they were trying to write all this while subtle changes were being made).

Also doesn't help that some editors didn't have the final rules yet either, but that's what happens when a new book isn't even back from the printers yet!

 

[Turjan]

So you're assuming the book's going to have massive errors in it because the web site examples do? It'll have errors, I'm certain, but I somehow doubt it'll be "paragraph after paragraph."

We will see. Let's just say that I hope you are right.

I'm also curious how complicated it will be to keep track of all those talents and feats.

 

[RodneyThompson]

Ahh but you are missing one minor detail. Its 1 minute per power used. So, if you blew off 6 powers, you get one back a minute over a 6 minute period of resting. Not a huge deal, but certainly not enough time for you. Of course, its an easy house rule to drop in a 10 minute wait per power to return. I kind of like the effect, its sort of like D&D spell casting but not per day.

No, it's not. After you rest for a minute, you get all the powers in your suite back.

While I might buy the whole, "You should have to rest for longer!" argument for D&D, it's not for Star Wars. Star Wars is a cinematic game where the heroes move between different set pieces with little or no downtime. While the heroes in D&D might be able to stop and rest while slogging through a dungeon, Star Wars heroes don't stop and rest in the middle of infiltrating a Star Destroyer. Too much of a delay between encounters stretches the limits of my Star Wars believability.

Of course, if you want to house rule the "1 minute" to "1 hour" you go right ahead. That's totally within the bounds of acceptability, and though I think it will fundamentally change the flow of the game, if that's the way you want to run your game then that should work fine. It creates a different play experience, but if that's what you want then I don't think it's a big deal.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

If that's the way it works, I read that as, "you rest for a minute, you get them all back."

Admittedly, I was just earlier (while I was writing my long-winded post) thinking that one house rule would be to extend that recovery time to an hour or more - maybe one power per hour, or something like that, to emulate the longer recovery times of the original rules. I imagine you could extend that, but it remains to be seen how badly that would affect the rest of the rules.




Even Indiana Jones had to rest - heck he rested instead of makin' sweet love to Marion Ravenwood on the tramp steamer because he was so bone-tired!

And D&D fighters going all day usually doesn't come up - and when it does, I've always adjusted for that, too. It's beyond suspension of disbelief for me that a fighter could slug away for a hundred rounds of combat and not get fatigued or exhausted. After a hundred rounds of continuous fighting, they become fatigued. After 200, they become exhausted. Usually, it's never come up, because the spellcasters are encouraging retreat before that point. Even that length stretches plausibility, but I'm okay with it. Like I said, a few hours is one thing -- one to five minutes later? That's a different ballpark to me.

And to be honest, I've never seen good fantasy where someone was using their powers full-tilt, all day, every day, they way that a martial adept or factotum could. In Lord of the Rings, they had to rest; in Star Wars, they had to rest; in Indy Jones, they had to rest; non-stop action gets boring to me, after a while.

I always thought that hit points that didn't instantly return where a good way to model non-endless fights. Eventually, fighters will hit each other, and will take damage. And without a Cleric (or other healer character) constantly healing them, this should be enough to make a combat last less than a few dozens round. And usually, it will also keep them fatigued after that.

 

[Nine Hands]

No, it's not. After you rest for a minute, you get all the powers in your suite back.

While I might buy the whole, "You should have to rest for longer!" argument for D&D, it's not for Star Wars. Star Wars is a cinematic game where the heroes move between different set pieces with little or no downtime. While the heroes in D&D might be able to stop and rest while slogging through a dungeon, Star Wars heroes don't stop and rest in the middle of infiltrating a Star Destroyer. Too much of a delay between encounters stretches the limits of my Star Wars believability.

Of course, if you want to house rule the "1 minute" to "1 hour" you go right ahead. That's totally within the bounds of acceptability, and though I think it will fundamentally change the flow of the game, if that's the way you want to run your game then that should work fine. It creates a different play experience, but if that's what you want then I don't think it's a big deal.

Whoops...my bad, I misread that part. The normal way works fine for me.

Good news is that I got the notice last night that my GM is going to wrap up his current campaign soon and I'm going to run Star Wars. The stuff I am seeing is really good and I'm going to put away my True 20 version and go with Saga Edition instead