Which system for a Star Wars game?

[Diggus Rex]

That's the same way I understand it, Wings and Sword. Many expanded universe books I've read posit the same ideas. We live in a era of spin, it's not surprising.

P.S. A liberal use of the minions rules easily recreates the Sail Barge fight. Luke kicks so much butt because he's the only PC that's armed. Everyone else is grappling, using improvised weapons, or blinded, making them not very effective no matter what their level is.
Sure, this is my opinion and it may be wrong but I'm confident in it and will stand by it.

You're absolutely right. The same could be said of the battle droids too. To me, the prequels just made the Jedi flashier (better special effects), not more powerful. It's a question of subjective impression, respectable gamers can differ.

 

[Sunglar]

ValhallaGH, I realize I did not make myself clear. Type as you think seems not to be generating the desired results.

What I meant is that two of my players, who briefly participated in a Mutants and Masterminds game experienced, what they recall as endless fights because everybody made their toughness save and took no damage. A repeat of that is what they were afraid of.

Hope I am a little clearer, and I just got back from a Christmas party and had a couple of drink! We’ll see in the morning.

wingsandsword thanks for the explanation. I had gotten pretty much the same info from other sources, including one of my players who is a MUCH bigger SW fan than me. Indeed the idea that what government passes as the truth becomes the truth is a theme for our times.

My one caveat is that you need to be immersed in the expanded universe to get that. The movies themselves do not illustrate that reality. I think it short changes the casual observer who may then simply bash the movies. Somehow we cannot assume everybody is up to date in the happenings of the expanded universe.

And to play devil’s advocate to my own argument, Lucas is just utilizing the multimedia platform that is becoming so common in all successful media. Like the LOST series, etc. Really don’t know if I am making much sense at this hour.

Again wingsandsword thank you, because I hope to play out that period in the campaign, the unraveling of the Jedi’s public image and I will take all that into account.

Sunglar out! (And going to bed!)

 

[ValhallaGH]

ValhallaGH, I realize I did not make myself clear. Type as you think seems not to be generating the desired results.

What I meant is that two of my players, who briefly participated in a Mutants and Masterminds game experienced, what they recall as endless fights because everybody made their toughness save and took no damage. A repeat of that is what they were afraid of.

I thought that might be the issue.

I have two solutions.
First, liberal use of minion rules. The only opponents I let use the damage track are major lieutenants and big bads; the result is that everyone that should go down quickly (stormtroopers, battle droids, etc) goes down quickly, while everyone that should last for a while (sith lords, vile gangsters and sometimes large beasts such as rancors) lasts for a while. Since most Jedi duels are depicted as lasting for many minutes, I've got no problem with such battles raging for dozens of rounds until one finally succumbs to ill fortune.
Yes, a single stormtrooper might get lucky and survive a hail of blaster fire, but anyone with a lightsaber and a +1 strength can great cleave through an entire legion of the empire's finest without ever rolling a die.
That's due to the second solution, that lightsabers deny the use of armor on a toughness save. The blade slices through any artificial protection like a hot knife through butter, rendering the best armor plating practically useless. Since you can take 10 when attacking minions and minions cannot automatically succeed on a toughness save, once you make the difficulty mathematically impossible for them, they automatically die. A lightsaber and a +1 str deal +7 damage for a Difficulty 22 toughness save; stormtroopers have a +1 toughness save without their armor, giving them a max result of 21; being minions, any failure on the toughness save makes them instantly dead.

I hope those points can alleviate your groups' fears.

P.S. More on minion usage can be found in the discussion in this True20 thread.

 

[Diggus Rex]

Heee ... reminds of my first character (a tank) in Mutants and Masterminds. Had soldier in a bear hug whom with a heroic catchphrase managed to shove a grenade in his mouth. The explosion killed him, while my guy kept belching ashes for a week after.

Valhalla, I'm curious as to how you deal with the 4th wall cracking randomenss of the damage track for non-minions. Those instances, while not frequent, when a shot hit expertly but the target takes NO damage at all. Do you describe a last second parry/dodge/duck/dive, or just "you shrug it off". I know its possible, was among the anoying things I dealt with in d6 (which also has a damage track).

The Saga edition is incorporating some kind of Hitpoint damage track hybrid and all this talk of the setting I sacrificed a large chunk of my creativity too is making consider a return to it (the prodigal GM). If it's something like quarter HP total = stun then half HP = fatigued, I'll be disappointed personally ... cause I just pooped that out here on a whim.

 

[Sunglar]

Valhalla, thanks for the explanation. Since I have not run True 20 I may try a one shot adventure with the system to wet my feet. Something simple set in modern times perhaps a horror story.

Diggus, and others, was the Vitality/Wound system that wonky? It seemed nice at first glance, although various problems have been illustrated in places I’ve read.

Is this one of the controversial things in the new Saga rules? I am willing to give it a try…

On a side note I find that when we had more cinematic combat (2nd Ed D&D with no board!) my narrative descriptions of combat were more detailed and incorporated more flavor. In 3rd ed although I try the mechanics and the board-game like aspect of combat sometimes suck my energy out of all the detail of descriptions. I realize this is my faul but brings me to the next question.

Those of you who use True 20, how often do you use a battle mat? Our gaming set up is ready to include minis, I think my players expect them and I have stocked up on SW minis but still wonder.

Talk later!

 

[variant]

So's the English Monarchy, but doesn't mean America should still be under British rule.

Granted, d6 Star Wars have been around for some time to established itself. But for my own experience, it sucks. I welcome the new change of pace, err system.

I for one welcome our new D20 overlords.

 

[Sunglar]

I for one welcome our new D20 overlords.

All hail the D20! Jejeje… It certainly seems like it. Back to work after the Holydays. Wish I was in a Galaxy far, far away…

 

[Diggus Rex]

VP/WP was not very wonky at all in my opinion. I've adapted it to every D20 game I run, D&D to Future. It gave more texture to damage than HP, was gritty, and reperesented movie damage excellantly. By this texture I mean characters went through more states than the two in hitpoints: fine until negative - HP, then dying. Gritty since a critical hit would at the least fatigue you and bring death much closer no matter what level you were. Cinematic in that heroes despite being badly hurt could catch there breaths and still go on without significant healing, a staple of action movies.

Gary Sarli, one of the writers, determined that in the current VP/WP system a PC advancing from level 1 to 20 had a 30% chance of being killed with a single attack. With a very lucky shot, a stormtrooper kill Vader. This was too gritty for them; I personally feel this level of lethality is what makes the PC's truely heroes. Also they wanted to add even more texture to damage while addressing criticism of the system. Essentially they're taking on the challenge of innovating their innovation.

In post #9 of this thread ( http://holonet.swrpgnetwork.com/showthread.php?postid=502414#post502414 ) on SWRPG NEtwork they give a chat transcript of a Q&A the writers gave about Saga Ed.

 

[ValhallaGH]

Valhalla, I'm curious as to how you deal with the 4th wall cracking randomenss of the damage track for non-minions. Those instances, while not frequent, when a shot hit expertly but the target takes NO damage at all. Do you describe a last second parry/dodge/duck/dive, or just "you shrug it off".

First off, if the target doesn't take damage then the shot did not hit expertly. That's a common misunderstanding of d20 games; the quality of an attack is not in the attack roll, it is in the damage roll. If it kills the target then it was an expertly placed attack, while if it deals minimal or no damage then it was an insignificant strike.
Now, to the answer you wanted. If they're in armor then I simply say that the armor worked. If it's a lightsaber or the guy is not in armor then I usually go with a last minute parry/dodge; unless the character is just supposed to be that stupid-tough in which case he just shrugs it off.

"He shrugged off a lightsaber to his chest?"
"Yes."
"... I hate you."
"I know."

For actual damage, I find myself doing the same things Lucas did. Singed fur, grazed shoulder, gouged thigh, missing hand, etc. Whatever seems most appropriate to the scene.

Valhalla, thanks for the explanation.

You're welcome.

Diggus has presented a pretty good analysis of VP/WP.
The advantages are more built in flavor than standard hp, faster healing than standard hp, anyone can be one-shot killed, and mooks are very mookish since they have around ten wp.

The disadvantages are that anyone can be one-shot killed (including the Big Bad), a dangerous level of vitality damage is an instantly fatal level of wound damage, you get some really odd disconnects when people are standing next to a nuclear weapon that only deals vitality damage (I'm looking at you, thermal detonator) and they happen to have enough vitality to not be injured by the blast. Also it's a level based toughness mechanic, and it's less dangerous (but deadlier) than a d20 Modern-style massive damage system.*
Finally, like hit points, it's a mathematical system. You can figure out, with absolute certainty, the average time it will take a single character, or group of characters, to kill a foe. Worse, there is very little you can do to alter this time since it's all based upon the cold numbers of the system.

Toughness systems introduce an element of "WTF!" by allowing a character of any level to break the laws of statistics and succeed when he should be killed (like Luke against Vader). This wild card element is what makes them especially appealing to me as it allows anyone to be killed in one-shot while leaving room for people that just won't die (even at level 1).

I hope that helps you understand.

*In VP/WP, the only really scary attacks are critical hits. With Modern massive damage, all attacks are scary since any single one of them can take a character out of the fight and even out of the adventure. When using weapons with similar damage outputs, the Modern-style will drop characters faster but with a better chance of recovering while the VP/WP characters will take longer to fall (on average) but will be less likely to get up.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

I played in a SWd20 game a while back, and it was quite fun. The Jedis did not dominate things, or at least I certainly didn't feel dominated playing the pilot with the blaster rifle*. There were many times where the Jedi's ability with a glowing death rod had no bearing on the situation.

I didn't like the VP/WP system, though; maybe it's going from full health to almost dead on a vibroaxe crit that makes me biased, but I expect to have my character battered around a bit before going down.

Brad

* - To be fair, I did design the party's ship and got to name and fly it. In fights, I typically would take cover and throw down a lot of blaster bolts. When this character died, the new one used grenade launchers. A lot.