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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jonrog1" data-source="post: 3549315" data-attributes="member: 189">Filthy new players!  When I had my 1E Ranger ...Well, I was in LA for the weekend on business, and there was the Convention right in front of me soooo ... #29 on Friday afternoon, I snagged a copy.All in all, any "this is a minis game, not an rpg" complaints should go right out the window.  It's a streamlined system, sure, but streamlined in a way most other RPG's are going -- let's just say that even if Steven Kenson and Green Ronin aren't in the credits, the lads at WOTC owe them a fine bottle of scotch.  That's not to take away from the excellent work the WOTC lads have done.  As far as I'm concerned, it's a home run.  The skill fold-in is great, and individual skills can easily be broken back out if it bugs you or some other variant suits your campaign (Mechanics might be a BIT too much of a catch-all)   Talent trees in the classes are aces, combat's no more streamlined than in every OTHER game except classic D&D, the damage threshold coupled with the triple HP for 1st level looks good, and I took the time to track out how the new Defenses, BAB and skills rise comparatively.   They all scale closely.    I haven't been fantasy gaming lately, so I missed the whole "swift action" bit when it was introduced.  From the previews it looked like it would annoy me.  Having read the book, I completely dig it.  I love the  Mutants & Masterminds/True20 Damage save and condition track.  The universal condition track in SAGA has actually tempted me to go back to HP.  I did not think that was possible.  You'll soon see everybody spot-welding the condition track Rodney and company designed into their own systems.  You will want somebody with Treat Injury, though.  Natural healing is a bit poky.  But that's probably infinitely tweakable.goofy sidebar -- the way they fixed Grapple (I'm a guy who loves to build Grapple characters) is pretty darn inspired.The "Force suite" system looks like it'll work just fine, and there are plenty of ways to regain force powers in mid-fight.  The design change to focus on per encounter rather than per day use is one I personally agree with.  Your mileage may vary.There's a warning in the Vehicle Combat that explicitly states you should not use the minis game for these combats, that you should use the rules from the RPG.  Which are very streamlined and sharp.  I prefer conceptual zone battle systems to grid movement, but I think this is probably about as good as you're going to get in anything that's NOT a dedicated space battle system.  The high CL's you're seeing for ships come from the expert crews, to a great degree -- ships are kind of treated like armor.  I'm not enough of a design-head to explain it clearly after one read, but it seems internally consistent.  People will probably use  minis they have  to track combat, as it's still grid based, but I'd say it'd hardly motivate you to go out and buy a couple boxes.My biggest compliment -- it's bloody readable.   Let's face it, a lot of rpg games, even introductory ones, are written for people who are very, very familiar with the terminology already.  There are sections of the PHB that are beyond obtuse.  This is one of the few RPG books I would have no problem handing to a complete newbie, and expect that after the weekend read they'd come back with a pretty good idea of what's going on and why.  There is a clarity here, of language, presentation and design, that's really top notch.  Again, I tend to find that a clean presentation design often reflects/descends from clean game design, and it's more my hobby horse, but I think this is probably the best written RPG I've ever read.  I put it over True20 if only because True20 is intentionally clean, limited in scope -- while SAGA still had to deal with an enormous amount of fluff/crunch.Is this D&D 4E?  If it is, we could do a heckuva lot worse.</blockquote>

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