Star Wars Saga: Two High-Level Characters

[comrade raoul]

To get a sense of the new Saga Edition rules, I thought I'd stat up a pair of high-level characters. This might give you a sense of the way the system plays at high levels, as well as possible balance issues and the way a Saga Edition character can kick butt. Each took about an hour or two to create, but I'm a complete novice about the rules. I'll add commentary in the next post.

First, here's a ranged attacker.[sblock]Shoots First, CL 20
Medium Human scout 3/scoundrel 3/soldier 5/gunslinger 9
Destiny 3, Force 15
Init +25; Senses Perception +16
Languages Basic, Shryriiwook

Defenses Reflex 39 (flat-footed 34), Fortitude 36, Will 33
hp 196, threshold 36

Speed 6 squares
Melee unarmed +19 (1d4+11)
Ranged heavy blaster pistol +24 (3d8+16/x3) or
Ranged heavy blaster pistol +24 (4d8+16/x3) with Rapid Shot or
Ranged heavy blaster pistol +24 (4d8+16/x3) with Rapid Shot and heavy blaster pistol +24/+24 (4d8+16/x3) with Rapid Shot and Double Attack or
Ranged heavy blaster pistol +20 (4d8+16/x3) with Rapid Shot and heavy blaster pistol +20/+20/+20 with Rapid Shot and Triple Attack
Base Atk +18, Grp +19
Atk Options Double Attack, Dual Weapon Mastery, Keen Shot, Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot, Sneak Attack +1d6, Trigger Work, Triple Attack
Special Actions Improved Quick Draw

Abilities Str 13, Dex 20, Con 18, Int 12, Wis 12, Cha 8
Talents Acute Senses, Dastardly Strike, Devastating Attack (pistols), Improved Quick Draw, Keen Shot, Multiattack Proficiency (pistols x3), Sneak Attack +1d6, Trigger Work, Weapon Specialization (pistols)
Feats Armor Proficiency (light, medium), Double Attack (pistols), Dual Weapon Mastery I, Dual Weapon Mastery II, Dual Weapon Mastery III, Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Quick Draw, Rapid Shot, Shake It Off, Skill Focus (Initiative) Triple Attack (pistols), Triple Crit (pistols), Weapon Proficiency (pistols, rifles, simple weapons), Weapon Focus (pistols)
Skills Endurance +19, Initiative +25, Mechanics +16, Perception +16, Stealth +20
Possessions two heavy blaster pistols, concealed holsters, tool kit, expensive clothes[/sblock]Now for a Jedi.[sblock]Dancing Lights, CL 20
Medium Kel Dor Jedi 7/scoundrel 1/Jedi Knight 9/Jedi Master 3
Destiny 3, Force 17, Strong in the Force
Init +24, Senses Improved Sense Surroundings; Use the Force +24
Languages Basic, Kel Dor

Defenses Reflex 39 (flat-footed 33), Fortitude 35, Will 37; Block, Deflect, Soresu
hp 152; Threshold 35
Immune fear effects

Speed 6 squares
Melee lightsaber +28 (2d8+24/19-20, x3) or
Melee lightsaber +26 (3d8+24/19-20, x3) with Rapid Strike
Ranged blaster pistol +25 (3d6+10)
Atk Options Acrobatic Strike, Fortune’s Favor, Rapid Strike
Special Actions Juyo, Resilience, Serenity
Force Powers Known (Use the Force +24): battle strike (2), force grip, force stun, mind trick, negate energy, rebuke (2), surge (2)
Force Secrets Quicken Power, Multitarget Power
Force Techniques Force Point Recovery (3), Improved Sense Surroundings

Abilities Str 8, Dex 22, Con 12, Int 10, Wis 18, Cha 18
Talents Ataru, Block, Deflect, Force Intuition, Force Perception, Fortune’s Favor, Greater Weapon Focus (lightsabers), Juyo, Resilience, Soresu, Vapaad, Weapon Specialization (lightsabers)
Feats Acrobatic Strike, Force Sensitivity, Force Training (2), Rapid Strike, Running Attack, Skill Focus (Use the Force), Strong in the Force, Triple Crit (lightsabers), Weapon Finesse, Weapon Focus (lightsabers), Weapon Proficiency (lightsabers, pistols, simple weapons)
Skills Acrobatics +21, Use the Force +24
Possessions lightsaber (self-built), Jedi robes, blaster pistol, protective goggles, antitox breath mask[/sblock]

 

[Zulgyan]

An hour or two!? That's too much. Even for a novice. I thought the new edition was supposed to fix this.

 

[Kralin Thornberry]

Well, he did start at 20th level.

 

[pawsplay]

An hour or two!? That's too much. Even for a novice. I thought the new edition was supposed to fix this.

It removed the maths, but now there are fiddling problems.

 

[comrade raoul]

(Most of this should only make sense for people already familiar with the book.)

Shoots First is optimized for dealing lots of ranged damage, fast. She's used four of her five gunslinger talents to completely eliminate any penalties she takes for Rapid Shot and Double Attack, and to reduce her Triple Attack penalty to -4, so she's rather unique among Saga Edition characters for her ability to make multiple attacks at peak accuracy. (And enables her to make Triple Attack useful for anything other than carving through mooks--it's normally a terrible feat.) Her other talents are designed for making sure that each shot takes an opponent a step down the condition track, or (thanks to Dastardly Strike) two steps if the opponent's flat-footed. If Shoots First can get off a full attack against an opponent without his Reflex Defense, she can ensure that that opponent is disabled regardless of his hitpoints--or at least suffers very large penalties to almost everything.

One way to further optimize Shoots First might be to trade a couple of scoundrel levels for scout levels, give up Keen Shot (which helps you avoid concealment--important, since Shoots First usually doesn't have time to aim), and pick up Improved Initiative (which would help her make sure that she lives up to her name) and Uncanny Dodge I (which would do a lot to protect her from opponents trying to pull the same stunt). But I think the way I presented her preserves more of her purity as a gunslinger.

Note that a dedicated ranged combatant might instead take levels of bounty hunter as well as gunslinger, and focus on doing nasty things with aimed shots: ideally, such a character could knock a target prone and move it two to four steps down the condition track (depending on whether the target was denied its Dexterity bonus to Reflex Defense and whether the attack's damage beat its threshold). Shoots First's approach is probably best for raw damage, though.

Dancing Lights, the Jedi, takes a different approach. He gives up on the idea of making multiple attacks entirely, and is instead all about moving around and making single, decisive blows. There are two reasons for this: first, I suspect it's a bad idea for high-level melee characters to focus on making full attack actions--in Saga Edition (and unlike D&D), they prevent you from making swift actions as well as move actions, which means that any round where you swing a lightsaber more than once is a round where you're not using the Force to do anything interesting. Second, because you can't move at all, it's easy for opponents (especially those, like Dancing Lights, with Running Attack) to prevent you from taking your attacks at all. Shoots First (and high-level sample Jedi, like Yoda) demonstrate that making effective full attacks requires a very large investment of character resources, and I think that such an investment is too large for an ability that can be negated so easily.

So Dancing Lights turns out to be a much more complicated and versatile character than Shoots First. He's basically more Yoda than Yoda: his fighting style centers on highly effective hit-and-run attacks and critical hits (which give him an extra standard action, thanks to his scoundrel talent, and which he can often guarantee on his first attack of an encounter, thanks to his Jedi Master's serenity ability): he can use Acrobatic Strike, speed bonuses from surge, and impressive tumbling abilities, to make extremely accurate melee attacks (and if he doesn't need all that accuracy, he can transfer a lot of that to his Reflex Defense), potentially enhanced by Force powers. He can use his suite of Force powers to target his opponent's weakest Defense. Dancing Lights is basically capable of using a Force point every round, thanks to his Force Recovery ability, and can use those points to designate an opponent against whom he can reroll attack rolls, quicken his offensive powers, or move quickly back up the condition track.

As a bit of general reflection--Ataru (the lightsaber form talent) is huge for Jedi--it lets them treat Strength as a dump stat, and relieve most of their MAD (which is normally terrible). Along with Skill Focus (Use the Force), it's an ability that I predict almost every Jedi taking. Expect a lot of characters with one or two levels of Jedi Master and one level of scoundrel--the synergy between the guaranteed critical hit you can get with Serenity and the extra standard action from Fortune's Favor is just too good to pass up.

On the whole--I still think the system--as it stands now, before it's bloated by supplements--is a significant improvement from earlier iterations of d20. Because most characters have largely the same attack bonuses and defenses, and so few abilities improve skill bonuses (so that most skill specialists have broadly the same bonuses), balance becomes much more straightforward--you have a pretty good idea, in general, about how often a high-level attack or skill check is going to succeed, which is something you couldn't really say with D&D. I'm a little concerned about a few factors--I do think lightsaber damage is underwhelming, I'm a bit troubled by the fact that Shoots First doesn't provoke attacks of opportunities if she doesn't aim, and it's clear that certain abilities are way better than others (Dodge, for instance, is--apart from the fact that it's a prerequisite for a pair of so-so feats, straightforwardly worse than two other feats available)--but, again, it's hard to evaluate any of these prior to playtesting, and in general I'm impressed.

 

[comrade raoul]

An hour or two!? That's too much. Even for a novice. I thought the new edition was supposed to fix this.

When I started the process, there was a lot about the rules I simply didn't know. With enough practice to make quick decisions about the feats appropriate for the kind of character in question, and if I wasn't tweaking so heavily, I think I could do a lot better.

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

An hour or two!? That's too much. Even for a novice. I thought the new edition was supposed to fix this.

Also note that OP said they were a "complete novice" regarding the rules.

As for speed of builds, it depends on how "fiddly" you get. It took me about 3 minutes to get the crunch down for a minor mid-level NPC for my campaign, while the night before it took mer closer to 1/2 an hour for one of the campaign's Big Bads (clocking in at 15th level)to get "just the right feel;" admittedly I find it easier to track everything if I start at 1st level and build from there, which might expand the amount of time spend on character builds.

 

[Henry]

A complete novice could probably create a 1st level character in a half hour or less with this game. Creating a 20th level character or its equivalent in most any system with no experience in the system is.... rough.

 

[ValenarJaeldira]

Now, I bring you a skill-monkey.[sblock]Jack of All Trades, CL 20
Medium twi'lek scoundrel 1/noble 13/Force Adept 1/Jedi 5
Destiny 3, Force 15
Init +24 (Force Intuition); Senses low-light vision, Perception +24 (Force Perception)
Languages Basic, Ryl, Lekku, Huttese, Rodese, Bothese, Shyriiwook, Mon Calamarian, Bocce, Durese

Defenses Reflex 36 (flat-footed 32), Fortitude 34, Will 34
hp 95, threshold 34

Speed 6 squares
Melee double lightsaber +18/+18 (2d8+10/2d8+10) or
Ranged 2 heavy blaster pistols +18/+18 (3d8+10/3d8+10)
Base Atk +14, Grp +14
Atk Options Dual Weapon Mastery III, Melee Defense, Point-Blank Shot
Force Powers Known (Use the Force +24): battle strike, force slam, force stun, surge (2)

Abilities Str 10, Dex 18, Con 10, Int 16, Wis 10, Cha 18
Talents Adept negotiator (12), Educated (9), Equilibrium (6), Force Intuition (16), Force Perception (2), Force Persuasion (14), Force Pilot (4), Force Treatment (8), Spontaneous Skill x3 (11, 18, 20), Trace (1)
Feats Dual Weapon Mastery I (3), Dual Weapon Mastery II (12), Dual Wepaon Mastery III (18), Force Sensitivity (1), Force Training x5 (6, 9, 13, 15, 15), Linguist (2), Melee Defense (10), Point-Blank Shot (1), Skill Focus (Endurance, Use Computers, Use the Force) (19, 17, 5), Skill Training (Ride) (3), Weapon Finesse (7), Wepon Proficiency (Lightsabers, Pistols, Simple Weapons) (12, 1, 1)
Skills Acrobatics +19, Deception +19, Endurance +20, Mechanics +23, Ride +19, Stealth +19, Use Computer (Gather Information) +23, Use the Force (Initiative, Perception, Persuasion, Pilot, Treat Injury) +24
Possessions two heavy blaster pistols, double lightsaber, pack with all sorts of random tools[/sblock]

While he's not the best in a fight, this Scholar-turned Jedi has enough breadth of knowledge to do anything...that's ANYTHING...when it comes to skills. The talents Force Perception, Force Pilot, Force treatment, Force Persuasion, and Force Intuition allow him to Use the FOrce instead of Perception, Pilot, Treat injury, Persuasion, or Initiative checks. The Trace talent allows him to substitute Use Computer for Gather Information. He is trained in all of the Scoundrel skills not covered under those two sets of Talents, plus he has Ride and Endurance from Noble and Jedi through the Skill Training feat and an Intelligence bump later in his career. He can make untrained Knowledge checks with his Educated Talent, and he can use any skill as if it were trained 3 times/day with his Spontaneous Skill talents. Also, if he wants to jump, his training in the force power, Surge, will help him get an additional +30 on the Jump check required.

Other Notes
[sblock]Order of classes:
Scoundrel 1, Noble 1-6, Force Adept 1, Noble 7-9, Jedi 1-5, Noble 10-13

Starting Stats: Str 8, Dex 15, Con 10, Int 14, Wis 10, Cha 15; lvl 4 +1 Str and Cha; lvl 8 +1 Str and Int; lvl 12 +1 Dex and Int (add Endurance as a trained skill); lvl 16 +1 Dex and Cha; lvl 20 +1 Dex and Cha.[/sblock]

 

[Talkkno]

Very nice...but could you please tell use what levels you attained the feats in?