SW SAGA EDITION: Preview 7

[Michael Tree]

Wow...

Grapple has apparently been completely redone - it's now a "grab attack" - the grabber take penalties on their attack roll(or bonuses, in the case of Boba Fett's whipcord?) and if they hit, they grab the target. Normal (non-Improved Unarmed Strike) folks can now do grabs without an AoO, though it looks like they rarely hit. Also, when you're "grabbed", your attack rolls are at -2 - it doesn't stop you from using a ranged weapon, even.

I must know those rules, because if there's any one rule that just doesn't work well in D&D, it's Grapple.

A spoiler thread on the Wizards board had the following feat:

Pin
Prereq: base attack bonus +1
Benefit: If you succeed on a grappling attack and your opponent fails the opposed grapple check, your opponent is automatically pinned until the start of your next turn. A pinned creature can't move or take any actions while pinned, and it loses its Dexterity bonus (if any) to Reflex Defense.
Special: You can't use the feats Pin and Trip during the same round. You can use Pin and Crush feats in the same round, however.

 

[Kunimatyu]

A spoiler thread on the Wizards board had the following feat:

Pin
Prereq: base attack bonus +1
Benefit: If you succeed on a grappling attack and your opponent fails the opposed grapple check, your opponent is automatically pinned until the start of your next turn. A pinned creature can't move or take any actions while pinned, and it loses its Dexterity bonus (if any) to Reflex Defense.
Special: You can't use the feats Pin and Trip during the same round. You can use Pin and Crush feats in the same round, however.

I wonder if this means we'll have both "grab" and "grappling" attacks? It's not a terrible idea -- it'd be nice to be able to "grab" a gigantic creature like an elephant to avoid some of its attacks, even if grappling it successfully should be all but impossible.

Having "Pin" as a feat (in a system where you acquire more feats than in 3.5) is a good idea -- it takes some training to be able to properly pin an opponent, as opposed to just severely hampering them.

I'm guessing "Crush" is just the "deal damage to your opponent" part of the old grappling rules.

 

[scourger]

I gotta say, after reading these 7 SWSE previews, I'm less enthuiastic about the game. It looks as if some of the old complexities are just replaced with new complexities. I now think I'll wait to see the adventure that comes out before I buy SWSE.

 

[Kunimatyu]

I gotta say, after reading these 7 SWSE previews, I'm less enthuiastic about the game. It looks as if some of the old complexities are just replaced with new complexities. I now think I'll wait to see the adventure that comes out before I buy SWSE.

I think I agree - the swift actions to initiate recovery strike me as one of the worst offenders.

That being said, if the number of complexities remains constant with 3.5 but the gameplay improves....hardly a drawback, in my opinion.

 

[Sir Brennen]

5) Interesting that Boba took twice his damage threshold but only received a -1 penalty. It must require a LOT of damage to actually take a -2.

I got the impression that you only move down the track by -1 if you're threshold is exceeded by an attack's damage; how much it's exceeded by doesn't matter (unless you're at zero hp.)

 

[Baumi]

Things I noticed:
4) Force points give you an automatic crit.

No, it wasn't a Force Point, it was a DESTINY Point (whatever that is).

 

[Plane Sailing]

Threads merged and a couple of posts deleted or edited to remove referrals to a now non-existent thread.

 

[Plane Sailing]

This is one of the bits I'm most excited about

Two thugs attempt to shoot Luke, who chooses to deflect them both. Their attack rolls are a 17 and a 3, for totals of 18 and 4. Luke rolls a 7 and a 14 on his Use the Force checks to deflect, resulting in a 23 and a 25 respectively (the latter accounting for the –5 penalty for the second deflection). Additionally, Luke chooses to redirect one of their shots, rolling a 7 on his ranged attack roll for a total of 19. This strikes a thug and deals 16 points of damage, killing the thug. The second thug flees in fear

.

At last! An (opposed?) check of some kind for lightsabres to deflect blasterfire, with a simple penalty for additional deflections. Huzzah!

What with this, the sensing through concealment and other stuff, I'm seeing in THESE star wars rules all the iconic stuff which was unaccountably missing from earlier editions.

Looks Gooooood

 

[Plane Sailing]

In the film, wasn't Han still mostly blind in this scene? I'm guessing that is glossed over for this account though (although we don't really know exactly what the -2 on the condition track really means)

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

I'm the best there is at what I do, and what I do is make snarky comments on message boards.

Seriously, I expected one of you two to call "jinx" on each other.

Naw, we're better behaved than some of the knuckleheads on unmentioned message boards Besides, jinx would have been creating threads at exactly the same time instead a few minutes apart.

Have to say that was a very cool combat example, and was worth waiting the extra couple weeks for. Though I wonder, based on how much Luke was dominating that combat, how cries of "WTF?! Jedi are way too powerful!" are going to show up on the WotC SW boards (that seems to be where most of those types of comments and arguments show up).

Only problem I see with this preview is that now I'm really jazzed to start playing Saga Edition Star Wars, and there's no way I can make it to Celebration IV