SW Saga Ed House Rules... Unleashed!

[Donovan Morningfire]

What format is this document? Pardon the apparent ludditude, but I don't seem to recognize a .RAR.

The .rar extension is because I zipped the file using WinRAR instead of WinZip, which is something that caused far more than it's fair share of grief. Lesson learned, and further installments will be packaged using the .zip extension.

And speaking of further installments, stay tuned to this thread, as version 1.6 will be posted later today

Edit: And version 1.6 is live.

 

[DerekSTheRed]

So why did you get rid of the new Athletics skill? To me that was a no brainer along with fixed hps per level. I also plan on folding ride in with Acrobatics.

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

So why did you get rid of the new Athletics skill? To me that was a no brainer along with fixed hps per level. I also plan on folding ride in with Acrobatics.

Main reason was nobody was really using it in the games I either ran or played in. The one player that figured they'd routinely be making Jump checks was a Jedi and chose to just take Surge as one of their powers and use that valuable trained skill for something else (like Perception in this player's case).

Climb? Ascension guns aka liquid cable dispensers.
Swim? Not something that comes up very often in most of the campaigns I've run or played since I posted v1.5.

That and it kinda gave Strength the short end of the stick, as well as whittling down the class skill list for Scouts and Soldiers, particularly for Scouts.

That's not to say I won't revisit the idea down the road, but for the meantime, it's out, much like I brought the Twin Attack talent from an earlier version back.

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

Okay, been a week and only one comment so far.

Anyone else have any thoughts on these? What works, what doesn't, and most importantly why? I'm interested to hear and discuss what the folks at ENWorld think (provided the conversation remain civil).

 

[Bagpuss]

Just starting to run Star Wars there seems an extensive (22 pages) of house rules. How much are actually necessary to fix serious problems with the system and how much do you feel you've just added for personal taste?

Going to print it out and have a look tonight.

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

Just starting to run Star Wars there seems an extensive (22 pages) of house rules. How much are actually necessary to fix serious problems with the system and how much do you feel you've just added for personal taste?

Going to print it out and have a look tonight.

To be honest, the vast majority of them are personal taste additions, both mine and from some of my fellow local players both past and present. Personally, I've found there's not a whole lot of things that truly needed to be fixed with Saga Edition.

Probably also would be fair to warn you that a good chunk of the stuff in the Force chapter does tend to skew things a bit more in the favor of Force-users, so I'd probably suggest leaving most of those out, and using very little of the Optional Rules section, particularly the 'unleashed' segment. Force-users can already be problematic (especially the Force wizard builds), so these might make matters worse; it would ultimately depend on the player; a good one you likely wouldn't have too many issues with, a bad one could open a huge can of worms.

 

[Nifft]

Yeah, some of the Unleashed stuff looks a bit much.

(I was going to ask about these house rules you mentioned in the other thread...)

I'm going to give the regular combat section a quick look now.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

Yeah, some of the Unleashed stuff looks a bit much.

Agree completely, which is the main reason it's tucked in the back with a disclaimer citing just that.

 

[small pumpkin man]

Just starting to run Star Wars there seems an extensive (22 pages) of house rules. How much are actually necessary to fix serious problems with the system and how much do you feel you've just added for personal taste?

Going to print it out and have a look tonight.

Looking at them they're pretty much all personal taste or corner cases. Many of them are added new things instead of changes too. It's more a list of cool and interesting things people could add to their game than a list of "fixes". Exceptions like making Gambler +5 instead of +2 or making Battle Meditation actually worth using let alone worth taking notwithstanding.

The overpowered things in Saga are low level characters with skill focus using skills to attack defences (and using skills like this against non-heroics at high level, but not everyone sees that as a problem) and people stacking the bounty hunter and Gunslinger talents which both move targets down the condition track if you aim. The later is easy to fix by just saying they don't stack, the former is a bit more complicated. Our current GMs answer was to just say you can't take Skill Focus Use The Force until about eighth level, which worked okay, if not great.

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

Looking at them they're pretty much all personal taste or corner cases.

Well, I did pretty much say exactly that when I responded to the Iconic Familiar.

The overpowered things in Saga are low level characters with skill focus using skills to attack defenses (and using skills like this against non-heroics at high level, but not everyone sees that as a problem) and people stacking the bounty hunter and Gunslinger talents which both move targets down the condition track if you aim. The later is easy to fix by just saying they don't stack, the former is a bit more complicated. Our current GMs answer was to just say you can't take Skill Focus Use The Force until about eighth level, which worked okay, if not great.

Sorry, but gonna drag out a soapbox for a moment regarding Skill Focus...

I see a lot of people (and I do mean a lot griping about how Skill Focus (Use the Force) completely breaks and ruins the game, yet they seem oddly mum regarding all the other issues that Skill Focus in and of itself causes. Personally, I've seen more damage done with Skill Focus in Deception and Persuasion than I have for Use the Force. Both Deception and Persuasion target Will Defense, which is often one of the crappier Defense scores for most bad guys, and can make it laughably easy to hoodwink NPCs or convince all but the most fanatical opponents to stand down from a fight. Heck, Skill Focus (Persuasion) and Adept/Master Negotiator will let someone literally talk a target into submission. I've heard of more than a few Noble/Crime Lord builds cherry-dipping into Jedi to get those two talents in addition to a tidy boost to their hit points and attack bonus.

Heck, last session of SWSE I played in, I was an astromech droid, and I caused all sorts of issues for the GM's scenario just because I had Skill Focus in both Mechanics and Use Computers. Who needs Force powers when you can lock a bunch of bad guys in a hallway by sealing the blast doors and then changing the access codes to open said doors? Mind whammies are good and all for making stormtroopers think "these aren't the droids you're looking for," but why not just slice the mainframe and change the description of the droids being looked for? And a great way to get that pesky protocol droid out of your wiring to boot.

Can Skill Focus in Use the Force be problematic at low levels? Yes, and I'm not disagreeing. I just think the bigger issue is with just plain old Skill Focus. And Gygax help you if a PC fulfills an Education destiny, since the two bonuses will stack! (At least they nerfed the Fool's Luck/Skill Focus combo, which really got abusive in a hurry.)

Okay, I'm done ranting. *puts soapbox away*