Sword and Sorcery Saga v. 1.02 and NEW Adventure Conversion!

[pukunui]

John - did you ever check out that Fantasy Concepts pdf? I want to know if it's worth spending money on (I know it's only $8 but still ...).

 

[The_Gneech]

John - did you ever check out that Fantasy Concepts pdf? I want to know if it's worth spending money on (I know it's only $8 but still ...).

I bought a print copy and skimmed through; it didn't light any fires under me, to be honest.

-The Gneech

 

[pukunui]

I bought a print copy and skimmed through; it didn't light any fires under me, to be honest.

-The Gneech

Good to know. Thanks.

So my players have voted to keep "high fantasy" races (they don't want just humans) and they also want to keep the old +/- racial ability mods rather than the new +/+ ones. Do you think it will work to just use any old d20 race with Saga? One thing I liked about 4e was that they managed to balance the races without needing level adjustments. One thing I'm trying to do is see how many, if any, of the Star Wars races can be reskinned as fantasy races. The ewoks, for instance, could be reskinned as halflings with minimal changes, I think. But one of my players really enjoys playing monster type races -- he really wants to play an orc but so far I've never let him. His 4e character was a minotaur. Any thoughts?

 

[The_Gneech]

Good to know. Thanks.

So my players have voted to keep "high fantasy" races (they don't want just humans) and they also want to keep the old +/- racial ability mods rather than the new +/+ ones. Do you think it will work to just use any old d20 race with Saga? One thing I liked about 4e was that they managed to balance the races without needing level adjustments. One thing I'm trying to do is see how many, if any, of the Star Wars races can be reskinned as fantasy races. The ewoks, for instance, could be reskinned as halflings with minimal changes, I think. But one of my players really enjoys playing monster type races -- he really wants to play an orc but so far I've never let him. His 4e character was a minotaur. Any thoughts?

Well, I have a version of the standard high fantasy races here:

http://www.gneech.com/swordandsorcery/downloads/saga_high_fantasy_races.pdf

You can also find a ton of the Star Wars species converted here:

Saga-Edition.com: The Star Wars Saga Edition RPG Databank » Races

The main thing with standard d20 races is that a lot of them have "+X to Y" abilities, which in Saga Edition are usually converted to rerolls, ability to take 10, or conditional feats ("Moongalian Devil-Lizards who are trained in Jump get Skill Focus (Jump) as a bonus feat." instead of "+8 racial bonus to Jump," for example.) This is done to avoid too many stacking modifiers, which throw game balance out of whack. So as long as you keep this in mind when importing them in, you should be good to go.

Gary Sarli, one of the original Saga Edition designers, put together a conversion document here:

Saga Edition Conversion Guidelines :: GMSarli Games

Finally, if you don't want to use my "orc" writeup, I recommend Gamorreans as an orc analogue.

Hope this helps!

-The Gneech

 

[pukunui]

http://www.gneech.com/swordandsorcery/downloads/saga_high_fantasy_races.pdf

No offense, but your race writeups aren't really to my taste.

You can also find a ton of the Star Wars species converted here:

Saga-Edition.com: The Star Wars Saga Edition RPG Databank » Races

This just seems to be a "if you want this race, see page xx in this book or look at an article on wizards.com" ... Maybe I'm just missing the section on conversions?

The main thing with standard d20 races is that a lot of them have "+X to Y" abilities, which in Saga Edition are usually converted to rerolls, ability to take 10, or conditional feats ("Moongalian Devil-Lizards who are trained in Jump get Skill Focus (Jump) as a bonus feat." instead of "+8 racial bonus to Jump," for example.) This is done to avoid too many stacking modifiers, which throw game balance out of whack. So as long as you keep this in mind when importing them in, you should be good to go.

Yes. This is exactly what I would do.

Gary Sarli, one of the original Saga Edition designers, put together a conversion document here:

Saga Edition Conversion Guidelines :: GMSarli Games

This one seems like it could have some useful stuff in it, although it's geared towards converting a character from the old Star Wars game to the new one but it has got some useful info, I suppose.

Finally, if you don't want to use my "orc" writeup, I recommend Gamorreans as an orc analogue.

Yes, I was thinking the same thing.


Sorry if I seem ungrateful. I guess I'm just being picky ...



I just thought I'd mention some of the changes I'm thinking of making:

1) I'm going to ditch Initiative as a skill. I never understood why they made it one in SWSE. I'm going to add Insight as a skill, though, and I'm going to port over the "feint" usage of Initiative, as well as some of the Perception usages.

2) I'm going to combine Climb, Jump and Swim into Athletics like in 4e.

3) I'm going to use a number of the 4e combat/movement rules -- eg. 1:1 diagonal movement, bull rush and grapple being simple ability vs defense checks, and that kind of thing. Although that being said, the SWSE rules for grappling aren't as bad as 3.5's were.

4) I'm not going to track XP. I'm just going to do the "everyone levels up when it seems most appropriate" thing.

5) I'm going to see if I can somehow use 4e's rituals and alchemical items. The biggest issue I can see would be balancing the cost and dealing with the 30 levels vs 20 levels discrepancy.

6) I'm thinking of making second wind a per encounter ability rather than per day. I don't know how much of an effect this would have on balance ... the Extra Second Wind feat would thus enable you to use a second wind more than once an encounter. I don't know how often that would ever come up, though. This one's still very much up in the air. Perhaps I could make it useable a certain number of times per day but still only once per encounter. Perhaps as many times per day as your Con modifier (minimum 1)? Thus the feat and talent keyed to it could still grant an extra usage per day.

 

[pukunui]

Sorry if I'm bombarding you with stuff, but I'm new at the whole "game design" thing, so I need all the help I can get!

Anyway, I was wondering if you'd be willing to have a look at this post and let me know how you would respond to some of the points raised - specifically the issue of converting a system that's heavily oriented towards ranged combat into one that's more about melee combat. I will admit that I still like 4e's forced movement mechanics (pushing, pulling and sliding, as well as all the minor teleports), but I don't know how one would emulate them with Saga.

For instance, 4e's eladrin have a racial ability that lets them make a short range teleport (6 squares, I think) once per encounter. How would you translate something like that into Saga? Would it be too powerful for a talent? Too powerful for a racial ability?

The Force doesn't allow people to teleport so there's no real precedent. The Force doesn't really let people turn invisible either (another D&D staple), does it?

 

[pukunui]

How's the monster book coming along?

I was thinking that adding a "steampunk" element to this would be as simple as taking some of the non-laser weapons (slugthrower rifles and pistols and the like) from SWSE and using them along with swords, axes, bows and what-have-you.

 

[The_Gneech]

Unexpected trip to Richmond over the weekend; the monster book will prolly be a few days, but still this week.

As for the pushing/sliding, etc., take a look at the "Optional Critical Hit Effects" in Uncanny Midnight Tales.

I don't think Saga Edition is any more range-friendly or melee-friendly ... there are plenty of SWSE combats that have turned into people ducked behind boxes trading shots at each other.

From a GM perspective, the best way to make combat move, no matter what game system you use, is to have goals other than "Kill the monster!" for the encounter. If you build an encounter using the usual guidelines, a toe-to-toe fight is going to favor the PCs almost every time, so it makes no sense for them to do anything but full attack. Instead, you've got to give the creatures something to achieve that the PCs want to prevent -- have them chase an NPC all around the board, for instance.

-The Gneech

 

[drothgery]

1) I'm going to ditch Initiative as a skill. I never understood why they made it one in SWSE.

I imagine Initiative is a skill in SWSE because they figured it had very skill-like mechanics, so why not make it a skill? Besides, then skill focus (initiative) works like classic d20 Improved Initiative, so you save the space of a feat. The problem with making initiative a skill was that almost everyone takes it, so effectively all characters have one less trained skill than the rules say they do.

 

[The_Gneech]

Unless you have sneak attack or some other ability that hinges on getting the drop on somebody, having a high initiative isn't actually as useful as many people think most of the time. Especially for the heroic classes, there aren't that many situations where letting an NPC take the first shot is going to turn the tide of battle that much.

Of course, if you've got fiercely competitive players who all want to get a piece of the badguy first, that's another issue...

-The Gneech