SW saga edition problems and gotchas?

[Plane Sailing]

I hope you're correct.

Good Luck!

If I'm not it might be several years before anyone is high enough level to find out

And at least in the meantime it should give better symmetry at lower levels where most of my gaming tends to go on so... we shall see, eh?

Cheers

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

A couple other details to watch out for (also a lesson learned from D&D 3rd edition):

Single Villain Encounters: Given there are no rules per se for Solo monsters in SWSE, don't throw just one villain against the PCs, even if said villain is 5 or more levels higher than them. Even if you include lesser threats that could be taken out in one or two hits, it keeps the PCs from concentrating all their firepower on one target at once.

Destiny Points: Being able to score an auto-crit is a very powerful thing, or worse yet if you let a PC take the Unleashed feat out of tFU sourcebook, which can allow some very powerful effects. Just the auto-crit itself is potent, more so if there's only one "boss" for the PCs to focus on, and worse yet if they have talents or feats that jack up the damage.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

Skill Training will just give +3 (and proficiency with a weapon gives the proficiency bonus which is either +2 or +3).

High 'use the force' skill would mean greater effect on a hit, but you've still got to get the hint with your Cha + 1/2 level + 3 vs their Will defence.

I'm doing more or less the same thing... Skills gain +4 for training and +4 for focus. Weapon proficiency grants +2 and weapon focus grants +2.

I also am using one-half level for both attacks and defenses (giving soldiers a +2 to attacks with all weapons that they are proficient with and jedi a +2 to attacks made with lightsabers) as well as skills.

Another thing that I've taken from 4th for SWSE is the concept of Combat Advantage. So, anything that would deny the Dex bonus or otherwise apply a penalty to the Reflex Defense instead grants combat advantage.

I am also using Armor as DR, rather than granting a bonus to the Reflex Defense, which is a bit of a deviation from newer trends...

It all seems to be working out okay so far.

 

[Felon]

IMHO, the Force rules are kind of nuts... As mentioned above, they're skill checks vs. Defenses, and therefore can attain extremely high bonuses with little expense. Oddly, it starts out hugely overwhelming at low levels, but attains approximate parity with attacks at level 20. (Hardly an ideal situation, imho. I'd like better parity throughout the levels.)-O

Right, this is the issue I came into this thread intending to comment on, only to see that others had already pointed it out. Sometimes I honestly feel like it's just me that notices these things. I'll add that not only is this unbalancing, it's just not very Star-Warsy that a jedi is far better off making attacks with force powers than with their lightsabers; at 3rd-level, the difference between attacking with saber versus a power is +5 versus +13.

IMO, Skill Focus should just let a character add his level rather than half-level to skill checks. Done.

 

[ValhallaGH]

IMO, Skill Focus should just let a character add his level rather than half-level to skill checks. Done.

I really don't think this would fix the problem. Rather than adding +5, you'll add anywhere from +1 to +10 to Use the Force checks (or any other skill, for that matter). This will reduce the supremacy of force powers at the low levels you're currently at (and maybe you don't play past those levels, I don't know) but it will actually enhance their effectiveness at high levels. Skill Focus suddenly become equal to Skill Focus plus the Education destiny (+5 destiny bonus to a single skill).

I like that by high levels, Jedi rely almost exclusively on their Light Sabers, because the Force is no longer an effective weapon on equivalent opponents.
I've watched Jedi force masters blast away at each other with the Force Stun / Rebuke / Rebuke combo. It's dull and tends to shove one or both of them way down the condition track. (Admittedly, we were in a very high-power game, with super-stats and destiny bonuses dropping every three levels; still, that just meant that Force powers were good even around level 16 when the campaign died.) Avoiding that sort of mess should be a key feature to any rules tinkering with SWSE.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I am also using Armor as DR, rather than granting a bonus to the Reflex Defense, which is a bit of a deviation from newer trends...

That's one of the non-4e things that I was intending to do - I'd be interested to hear how you have done it (used the raw number as DR? Something different?)

Cheers

 

[Plane Sailing]

I like that by high levels, Jedi rely almost exclusively on their Light Sabers, because the Force is no longer an effective weapon on equivalent opponents.

Just like the Count Dooku/Yoda duel in Ep2 in fact.

I like the idea that at high levels it is lightsabre prowess rather than force usage which is of most significance.

Unfortunately the vanilla SWSE rules allow force usage to be vastly more powerful than other options at low levels, which doesn't sit well.

It seems that direct use of the force is only really workable on 'lower level' foes... those are the times we see it directly used in the films. A system which supported that generally wouldn't be a bad thing IMO.

Cheers

 

[Felon]

I really don't think this would fix the problem. Rather than adding +5, you'll add anywhere from +1 to +10 to Use the Force checks (or any other skill, for that matter). This will reduce the supremacy of force powers at the low levels you're currently at (and maybe you don't play past those levels, I don't know) but it will actually enhance their effectiveness at high levels. Skill Focus suddenly become equal [to Skill Focus plus the Education destiny (+5 destiny bonus to a single skill).

So, cap it.

I like that by high levels, Jedi rely almost exclusively on their Light Sabers, because the Force is no longer an effective weapon on equivalent opponents. I've watched Jedi force masters blast away at each other with the Force Stun / Rebuke / Rebuke combo.

Well, I suppose making every opponent a jedi master with Rebuke is certainly one way to discourage over-indulgence in force powers....Not sure that was your point though, as it basically becomes roshambo at that point. The saber only clears leather when force powers are blocked, so it basically is relegated to auxilary weapon rather than being the cornerstone of jedi combat.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

That's one of the non-4e things that I was intending to do - I'd be interested to hear how you have done it (used the raw number as DR? Something different?)

Cheers

Originally I was using a flat add to the raw Reflex Defense of the armor (i.e. adding two to the value to get the DR). After a bit, I decided that I wanted stromtrooper armor to have DR 10 (enough to pretty much stop a sporting blaster from a low-level punk, but not enough to stop any serious firepower), so I rearranged things, using that number as my baseline and just counting up or down from there.

By applying mook rules to stormtroopers (any damage that gets through pops them), this allows me to grant some pretty significant protection to important characters while preserving the ability of the pcs to mow down dozens of troopies.

I applied the same thing to vehicles, adding a value to the vehicle's armor bonus and adding it to the existing DR. I think I added four, there. Also, mook rules apply to TIE Fighters.

Another thing that I did that relates to this was that I made Ion damage bypass DR, since it isn't really meant to damage a device so much as to disable it. This has made ion weapons somewhat more effective.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Originally I was using a flat add to the raw Reflex Defense of the armor (i.e. adding two to the value to get the DR). After a bit, I decided that I wanted stromtrooper armor to have DR 10 (enough to pretty much stop a sporting blaster from a low-level punk, but not enough to stop any serious firepower), so I rearranged things, using that number as my baseline and just counting up or down from there.

By applying mook rules to stormtroopers (any damage that gets through pops them), this allows me to grant some pretty significant protection to important characters while preserving the ability of the pcs to mow down dozens of troopies.

I applied the same thing to vehicles, adding a value to the vehicle's armor bonus and adding it to the existing DR. I think I added four, there. Also, mook rules apply to TIE Fighters.

Another thing that I did that relates to this was that I made Ion damage bypass DR, since it isn't really meant to damage a device so much as to disable it. This has made ion weapons somewhat more effective.

How has this been working in practice? It sounds like the kind of thing I'm after, and if you've been testing it out successfully I'd be very happy to go with what already works!