Strengths and Weaknesses of WEG's d6 compared to FFG's new system?

[Zaran]

My group played EotE for over a year. The narrative dice system works pretty good for EotE. Characters are fun to make and grow. There are three things I don't like about the system and they are why we burnt out of it. 1) Starship scale combat doesn't work well with my group. Especially for starfighters. There isn't enough defense. 2) About a third of the character content in Age of Rebellion was pulled from Edge of the Empire. The new character trees didn't seem as well made either. For instance, the Infiltrator doesn't have Stealth as a Class skill. 3) Something you would expect to be in AoR, large scale combat, was omitted from the core book and added on later and it shows.

In summation, if you like to keep to doing Han Solo stuff, the game works out pretty well. You want to do Rogue Squadron stuff? Play d6.

I really haven't delved into the Force and Destiny stuff. It basically balances Force users by making Jedi of Luke's level in Return of the Jedi to be like 800 point characters. Non Force users of 800 points will be just as awesome so the game has that going for it.

 

[Keldryn]

Yes I believe drastically slowing down and capping force skill gain would help balance Jedi out. As written it requires very little experience to quickly raise low skills. I don't remember if Force users are required to have a mentor to raise their force skills, that may be a limiter that I'm not remembering.

I think that it costs twice as many character points to improve a Force skill if you don't have a mentor. It's been a long time since I've played it (or even read the books), but I'm fairly certain that is correct.

As an example of Jedi power your Control skill is added to your lightsaber damage. So even 3d Control added to the 5d of the base saber results in an 8d damage pool that most folks are resisting with 3-4d. This usually results in Jedi incapacitating foes in a single hit.

It definitely worked like this in the first edition game, but I'm not sure if later editions toned it down somewhat. I think that in 2nd edition, you had to activate the Lightsaber Combat ability and keep it up each round (thus reducing your effective skill dice) in order to add your skill codes to lightsaber damage.

Jedi incapacitating foes with a single lightsaber hit is pretty true to the movies though.

 

[aramis erak]

Strengths
WEG: simpler system overall. Faster character generation. Lots of stuff released. Very flexible character generation, too.
FFG: system is somewhat more robust, reinforces the theme mechanically (obligation/duty/morality), jedi don't completely overwhelm non-jedi, but are clearly powerful. Narrative results from dice rolls much wider, more interesting.

Weaknesses
WEG: high stats seldom fail, simplistic jedi code view. Possible to hurt a star destroyer with a hand weapon.
FFG: only two scales, nearly impossible to hurt even the lightest vehicles with a blaster pistol. No tactical movement option; rules written to preclude using maps and minis. Dice may be a learning curve issue. Too many special abilities (talents) - players often forget them late on in campaigns.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Only have experience with the WEG d6 system. Issues that arose with it were with characters simply getting too combat effective - too combat specialized. Jedi were a problem to be sure and it became clear that after an initial period of perhaps lagging just a bit behind they'd end up pouring points into lightsaber and force skills and inevitably tipping the game hopelessly in their favor. Droids actually became another issue for much the same reason. Allow a combat or "bounty hunter" droid (like IG-88) and the player is certain to dump points into those combat stats and just become an invulnerable killing machine. Oh you COULD challenge them, but only while killing off the weaker PC's in the collateral damage.

Really, this is just an issue that arises because an RPG is NOT a movie. A movie can place wholly arbitrary limits on a powerful character. In an RPG you just CANNOT have one PC who runs roughshod over the game with the other PC's just tagging along in their shadow.

Actually, I've been thinking strongly of starting a new d6-based Star Wars game but may not get around to it until Ep. VII finally rolls out. But, to fix those issues noted above I'd be making some rather notable changes to how The Force and Jedi abilities actually work. And then letting the game unfold along lines as determined almost wholly by the PC's actions, not by NPC actions, and certainly not attempting to keep to events and canon from the movies/EU.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

Issues that arose with it were with characters simply getting too combat effective...

We noticed the same issue with high Strength characters. Since Strength dictates how well you resist damage and deal melee damage, you can have a character who is difficult to damage and who can dish out damage with simply a high Strength. My friend had a wookie with a maxed Strength, bountyhunter armor, and a vibroaxe who rolled more dice to resist than a blaster rifle's damage and dealt the same damage as an E-Web.

It wasn't the end of the world nor did it ruin the campaign but it could be an issue in some groups.