Star Wars Saga, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

[hong]

Soldiers have Treat Injury as a class skill. So you can either be a rich civilian doctor, or a combat medic. Works for me.

 

[hong]

D&D's sneak attack was the 3.0 designers' clever way of transitioning the thief's backstab ability from a maneuver that required a lot of slow skulking n' stalking into one that connoted sudden action and acrobatics.

It's terrible at connoting sudden action and acrobatics. No matter how acrobatic and agile you are, outside the first round of combat you still can't sneak attack without someone to flank for you. Yes, I know about Improved Feint.

Now the IH method whereby you can provide flanking for yourself, or use skill challenges with Tumble and Jump to deny Dex bonus to AC, that's much more "sudden action and acrobatics". D&D sneak attack is more about tactical maneuvering and battlefield control.

 

[Victim]

Indeed, not only do nobles make good doctors, but all doctors must be noble, for it is the only class that can be trained in Treat Injury.

Or is there some way in SWSE to train a skill that's not on your class list? If not, I suspect I will favor a house rule that allows the extra trained skills gained from Int. modifier to be chosen freely, heedless of class list restrictions.

Soldiers also have Treat Injury.

The discrepencies we're talking about are straightforward quantifiables, and measuring how they balance out isn't all that tricky. Not only is it in fact possible to discuss and analyze data without implementing it, but heck, sometimes it's even a good idea. And the number of people adept at doing so is in excess of "almost nobody". This isn't rocket science, or rocket art for that matter.

Yeah, that's great. But in our analysis of the class abilities, we can disagree as to the values of various feats and talents.

For instance, the ability to inflict a -2 on the condition track (-1 Dastardly, plus sneak attack probably generates enough damage) when you get the jump on someone is very good, especially if used as part of a coordinated strategy. Work with another character who dishes out conditions [scoundrel, bounty hunter or Jedi (Force Stun, Adept Negociator)] or use poison, and you can do a condition spike and inflict extreme penalties. Sure, evasion and some of the skill rerolls are good, but they don't seem to have talents that fit together so well as part of a strategy.

Similarly, I can argue that the Scout's need to train in Endurance to get their starting feat reduces the value of both their feats and their number of trained skills.

 

[wingsandsword]

Anyway, even if I wasn't using miniatures, why does the squares/meters distinction matter? Maybe in the Star Wars universe, they refer to their ranges by their unit of measurement - the square! (Note: I'm sure in some EU source, or maybe even in the movies, someone references the ACTUAL units of measurement they use, but I don't remember it, so... ) It's actually not a bad unit of measurement even for an abstract system, being 'the space occupied by an average human' and whatnot.

For the record, the Star Wars galaxy is on the Metric system, they even use it in the movies. . .

Remember the briefing scene in Episode IV, talking about the exhaust port in the Death Star? It's repeatedly mentioned as being "two meters wide".

While they do use a calendar unique to Star Wars, in terms of units of measurement they use Metric pretty much everywhere in the EU or movies whenever one comes up, the only non-metric unit used is parsec for interstellar distance.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I don't see an Improved Feint feat. Perhaps I missed it masquerading under a different name? A sneak-attacking scoundrel really needs stuff like that.

Well, initiative is a skill, so there is skill training and skill focus feats, right?

 

[Neo]

looks nice, but I have to say that as much as I love Star Wars I will not be buying the new version.

I'm getting pretty sick on the whole of this trend of a new Edition every few years nonsense its bad enough with D&D and now we get it with SW, its not about revitalising or rejuvenating the rulesets as that can be done with sourcebooks or options books for existing versions... its about money pure and simple, and I for one am getting pretty tired after 28 years of gaming of having to shell out more £££ every time they decide to defunct one edition so as to make room for another that has relatively minimal changes anyway.

It is this continual respawning in my experience that has been a large dent in the interest of pnp RPG enthusiasts as a whole as well as getting old gamers back into the hobby after a break. I cannot count the number of times I've discussed with people getting back into gaming, and then they hear a new edition is out and the books they had are now defunct and then the old gamers never return to the hobby because they dont want to have to shell out again.

Nope, for me I have to say I'll be sticking to SW Revised core edition and make/house rules what I need to keep playing it and SAGA can go about its merry way without my hard earned £££ and the same goes for the inevitable D&D 4th. Enough is most assuredly enough.

The new edition is a very pretty book though and the shape didnt seem such a bad thing.

 

[ValhallaGH]

I'm confused by what you are saying here... I've got the book, but not with me, and not therefore am I allowed to look and see what you are trying to say about this skill.

Are you saying that this skill is Trained Only, or that only certan aspects are Trained Only and they are just not mentioned as TO in the skill uses option, or what???

Certain aspects (Treat Disease, Treat Poison, Treat Radiation) are listed as Trained Only but include a sentence about the differences between untrained use and trained use.

It's inconsistent and confusing.

 

[Dragonhelm]

As a long time Star Wars fan and gamer I thought the book was...nice. Better then the previous attempts but still not enough to shake my love of the WEG D6 game. I just don't feel class and level fit the Star Wars universe. I never think of Han as a X level Scoundrel or Scout or whatever. He's a Smuggler. Chewbacca is a Wookiee Mechanic. My players are a Vigilante Jedi, an Alien Space Pirate, A Twi'lek Pod Racer, a Renegade Stormtrooper and a Piloting Droid. It's just easier to 'feel' the atmosphere that way IMHO.

And that's okay. Use the rules system that you think works best for your game.

In my case, I have a character I've played for several years who has been in a homebrew White Wolf system, the WEG d6 system, and every version of the d20 system to date. He's been around the block a few times. What I really like is that the designers of the d20 SW game have made some good attempts to try to keep some of the WEG feel, especially with Force powers.

To each their own. If the new rules work for you, great. If not, then don't sweat it.

 

[drothgery]

Well, initiative is a skill, so there is skill training and skill focus feats, right?

You can use the Deception skill to feint in combat as a standard action; if you've got a Noble ally with Inspire Haste, then you could -- I think -- get encouraged to make the Deception check as a move action. Or possibly inspire yourself with a one-level dip into Noble.

 

[drothgery]

If you look closely, the Noble is the most kick-butt doctor in the Core Saga rules. They get Treat Injury as a Skill, as well as all the Knowledges (life sciences for example), AND cybernetic Surgery and Sugical Expertise as bonus feats. Short of some kind of talent tree that raises the dead (which the Treat Injury already does within 1 round), then they ARE the doctors of this new Star Wars.

The absolute most kick-butt doctor in Saga is a Force Sensitive Noble/Force Adept (about the only way to make a good Force Healer is with talents in the Force Adept tree).