D20 Star Wars: Legacy edition or Revised Rule Book?

[Oracle_of_Void]

I am really interested in using the D20 Star Wars game. However, I don't know which version of the rule book I should get. My preliminary research isn't telling me a bunch. So, I'm hoping you guys can help! :D

Should I buy the Revised Core Rule Book or the Legacy Edition Rule Book? Pros and cons of either option? (if it matters/helps describe the pros and cons, I prefer Pathfinder to D&D)

Secondary question, if I buy other D20 Star Wars books, are there going to be system compatibility issues? I doubt it cause D20 is usually smarter than that but I want to make sure.

[Eisenheim]

I would recommend Saga Edition over either of those. I played RCR and found Saga far superior.

[Mando Knight]

You mean Saga Edition (quick edition check: the first d20 Star Wars core book had Episode I art on the cover, the Revised Core has Episode II art, and Saga Edition's core book has Vader)? It's generally considered to be one of the better-balanced d20 variants (particularly in the relative balance between "mundanes" and Force-Users), though some of its system quirks can still be exploited as much as any other d20 system.

And no, d20 is not "smarter than that." Pathfinder and D&D are closer to each other than RCR is to Saga, in some respects. Armor, weapons, vehicles, all of it are entirely different.

Both have the problem that they're out of print, so books are more expensive to buy. Fantasy Flight Games has a newer, not-d20 system out that doesn't have as much material yet, but is in print.

[Oracle_of_Void]

Yeah, I guess I messed up. Saga edition, not Legacy :P. I'm not worried about price, I know the books would be expensive. Is Revised Core material compatible with Saga? Or would I need to sloppily convert the material?

[Mando Knight]

Revised material is in no way directly compatible with Saga. One of the first things released with Saga was the conversion guide, which went the old "scrap everything, and use these rules to build a rough equivalent" method.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Saga is to d20 Revised as 4th Edition is to 3.5 Edition D&D, except they didn't completely gut multiclassing or promise a bunch of online tools they never delivered. There is very little in the way of rules overlap.

That said, most of what was printed in d20r got reprinted in Saga in some way, shape, or form, outside of like adventure modules. They're both pretty robust systems if you can gather enough sourcebooks (and remember the errata. Saga's got a lot of it).

[Solaris]

I like both of them (though I hate 4E, I do like a lot of the design concepts in SWSE). Saga is much less like d20 D&D than RCR; you can move a D&D character into RCR with minimal conversion (Force-users balance against casters, while mundane classes are about T5-T4), but you really can't do that with Saga Edition. Sure, it has some similarities, but it's really not a d20 system game.

[Eisenheim]

Yeah, the D20 product most like, though not enough for easy conversion, saga is really d20 modern. Saga uses both feats and talent trees and a set of relatively generic base classes that benefit from multiclassing and expect you to progress to the more advanced, specialized classes later on.

If no one is trying to break the system, it works well. Certainly one of my favorite d20 products.

[Philistine]

It should be noted that SWd20 was first published before D&D 3.0; and the SWd20/RCR version was only a year after that. As you might expect from that timeline, SWd20 and /RCR are pretty much a trainwreck, displaying almost* all of the flaws of early 3rd edition D&D but having benefited from none of various attempted fixes and tweaks published in the late 3E era. You shouldn't touch it with a stolen ten-foot pole.

SWSE still has some flaws, but despite those is probably the sanest, most elegant d20 system WotC ever produced. If you're going for a d20 Star Wars system, Saga Edition is the way to go.


* There isn't really a "full caster" equivalent, IIRC: SWd20's Force mechanics more closely resemble the universally-despised 3.0 Psionics rules than anything else.