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Carrion_Humanoid
2007-06-28, 08:11 PM
This Topic will be dedicated to those who own the new(and oddly shaped) StarWarsD20-Saga Edition. I am assuming this is 4.0, because well. . . I was told that. Anyways, this is dedicated to people who want to start up games, ask questions about it, and show off their creations!

However, as I started this I have a question-
-Is there a computerized version of the revised character sheet yet? Because copying this is quite annoying.

RTGoodman
2007-06-28, 09:39 PM
I was just getting to start a thread about this. Good thing I looked at this one first...


First off, these aren't the character sheets you're looking for (http://www.wizards.com/starwars/downloads/SW_charsheet.pdf).{/Jedi mind trick} Actually, I'm not sure if that's the most updated version, but that's the one my friend (who wants to start a game of SW d20) sent to me.

Secondly, I don't have the book yet (didn't have enough money for it when I went out earlier this evening, but I've been reading up on it online. Here's a quick question that I can't figure out: how does this "Condition" sliding scale thing work?

Matthew
2007-06-28, 09:43 PM
Here's a link to the last Thread on this subject: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=46544

Basically, I think Saga Edition is a step in the right direction and a good sign for D&D 4.0. Goodbye Iterative attacks and good riddence I say!

Nerd-o-rama
2007-06-28, 09:48 PM
I thought it would be the third edition of d20 Star Wars, after the original and the Revised line.

pestilenceawaits
2007-06-29, 02:57 PM
I think this is a great book and the new rules really seem to make a fast easy game to play. The condition track is kind of tied into your hit points and the worse your condition the harder it is for you to do things getting really low on hp or being stunned and that sort of thing worsen your condition while there are feats and force powers to improve it. I think my favorite thing about this edition is the way skills are either trained or untrained no cross class or class skill ranks to worry about.

ndragonsbane
2007-06-29, 03:33 PM
I thought it would be the third edition of d20 Star Wars, after the original and the Revised line.

First and Second Edition were published by West End Games quite a few years ago and used a d6 system (similar to the old Shadowrun system if you've played that). Third Edition was WoTC's first version of Star Wars.

Having played both 2nd and 3rd (including the revision), the new saga edition is definitely a better overall definition for a high-adventure cinematic style experience. There are a lot of small changes that make it feel more like old 2nd edition (the condition track is similar to taking wounds, the new skill set feels more like the original skills from 2nd edition although they still work more like 3rd edition).

I've played a few test encounters and I have to say this is the only Star Wars I've ever played were Vehicle/Space Combat is both entertaining and viable for a long-term campaign. The old systems were so stinking complex and convoluted that the combats took forever to resolve and everyone but the pilot was bored (and so was he half the time). It's nice to be a gunner in a ship without being super specialized and not ABSOLUTELY SUCK...especially at lower levels. Regular combat runs smoothly and quickly, even at higher levels. Jedi can be pretty powerful if you put some thought into it, but they really only feel more like Jedi...2nd edition made them suck without a lot of advancement in their various force skills (I've never seen a d6 jedi successfully use a force skill and every campaign I've ever been in has had at least one and usually two), and even though 3rd edition jedi were more useful, they couldn't reliably do some of the most basic Jedi maneuvers like deflecting blaster bolts (at least at lower levels, never saw one in action higher than 5th level). Character classes now have d20 modernesque talent trees to choose their class features from which allows (with their free-multiclassing) for just about any Star Wars character concept to work eventually.

The J Pizzel
2007-06-29, 04:03 PM
SW SAGA is a vast improvement over the d20 version (also called Revised Core Rules, RCR). We plaed the old d20 several time and never could get into it. We've had SAGA since it came out and have played multiple one shots as well as started a long term campaign. The Jedi are actually balanced this time, the Forcer Powers use a ToB approach, the other classes are actually worth playing, and most of all, starship and vehicle combat is just downright awesome. If you have any questions do hesitate to ask me or Amiria, we've been discussing it on the other thread.

rtg - the condition track is a nice approach to long lasting battles. Any time your exceeds your Threshold, you move down the Condition Track, which gradually produces more penalties. At first it's kind of a bother to keep up with, but it really adds atmosphere to the combat.

pizzel

Jades
2007-06-29, 04:13 PM
y'all are making my ears bleed.

This is NOT the right step for d20.

The damage bonus doesn't make sense when you adjust it do Dungeons and Dragons. A Mage should NOT get the right damage bonus as a Barbarian!

Part of what makes d20 great is the adaptability of a character. At any level you can gain new skills, improve old ones, and customize your character with greater ease. No need to waste a feat, change class, or any such nonsense.

I'm just not thrilled with the system at all. Sure, there are some improvements to d20, but not enough good new stuff for me to be happy with it. The good changes are taken from other sources that are basic adaptations to 3.5 and NOT meritous of a new system.

ndragonsbane
2007-06-29, 04:19 PM
y'all are making my ears bleed.

This is NOT the right step for d20.

The damage bonus doesn't make sense when you adjust it do Dungeons and Dragons. A Mage should NOT get the right damage bonus as a Barbarian!

Part of what makes d20 great is the adaptability of a character. At any level you can gain new skills, improve old ones, and customize your character with greater ease. No need to waste a feat, change class, or any such nonsense.

I'm just not thrilled with the system at all. Sure, there are some improvements to d20, but not enough good new stuff for me to be happy with it. The good changes are taken from other sources that are basic adaptations to 3.5 and NOT meritous of a new system.

I agree with you when you apply it to D&D, but frankly I doubt this system will become D&D 4th edition (granted a few things may make it in if 4th edition is d20). I believe I read somewhere that the changes were actually meant to making Star Wars different from D&D (something I agree with whole-heartidly)...cannot remember where but I think it was in a web-enhancement or pre-release article.

Jades
2007-06-29, 11:16 PM
Ah, but so many idiots are clammering about how this is how D&D should be! EN world is filled with them. So are the gaming stores that I frequent. So is my gaming group.

Dhavaer
2007-06-29, 11:25 PM
The damage bonus doesn't make sense when you adjust it do Dungeons and Dragons. A Mage should NOT get the right damage bonus as a Barbarian!

Make it half BAB?
(The damage bonus is half character level, right?)

Jades
2007-06-29, 11:29 PM
That could help, but they've gotten rid of a bad base attack bonus too.

I'm just not a fan of the damage bonus. Multiple attacks, I think, are just better.

Matthew
2007-06-30, 07:17 AM
Jades, it's really not very nice to call people who disagree with you idiots. There are things about Saga Edition that are clearly improvements on the D20 System, mainly things that people already commonly House Rule onto D&D. Some aspects are going to be particular to Saga and some are not.

The Damage Bonus isn't really a big deal, even if it is done by Character Level rather than by Base Attack Bonus we're talking a mere +10 Damage at Level 20. Hardly a game breaker.

In my opinion, Iterative Attacks are one of the worst ideas that Third Edition presented and their dismissal is well overdue. Three Extra Attacks at -25%, -50% and -75% were never a good idea and created more headaches than enough with regard to balancing Two Weapon Fighting, Weapon and Shield and Two Handed Weapon mechanics.

I doubt the customisation options are really going to disappear with a Fourth Edition, but it has to be said that the D&D Feat and Skill system is just not very good. Star Wars Saga Edition is just a simplified approach, but I would hope that a Fourth Edition of D&D would address the underlying mechanical problems of the Feat and Skill system.

In short, there are some great ideas in Saga, but obviously not all of them need apply to a new Edition of D&D.

Closet_Skeleton
2007-06-30, 11:53 AM
Part of what makes d20 great is the adaptability of a character. At any level you can gain new skills, improve old ones, and customize your character with greater ease. No need to waste a feat, change class, or any such nonsense.

Except the cross-class system from DnD means that you often do need to change class to get a certain skill.


That could help, but they've gotten rid of a bad base attack bonus too.

I'm just not a fan of the damage bonus. Multiple attacks, I think, are just better.

Which makes more sense, the idea that you can loose 5 arrows in 6 seconds or the idea that the more skilled you are the better you can hurt people?

North
2007-06-30, 12:09 PM
Me and my group started a campaign last week. Three Jedi and my Noble. Wealth was just too amusing to pass up. Its been really fun and combat has been great so far. Its a lot easier designing new chars. Im pretty impressed. It really captures the flavor of star wars really well. If DnD were to go this route Id give it a chance.

Jades
2007-06-30, 03:58 PM
I'm an archer, and trust me, I can loose a lot more than five arrows in six seconds!

Matthew, Sorry, I didn't mean to be rude. Just insulting. Never rude.

Yeah, there are a lot of good things in it, things that have been houseruled into my campaigns. Not enough to be worth a new system. Another book like Unearthed Arcana, was it, would suit D&D just fine. AD&D3.75, they could call it.

And while I agree that the combat mechanics aren't the best that they could be, I'd like to see skill based combat, I like the extra attacks based off of BAB. And even though +10 to damage isn't that much, it is still very annoying to consider a Noble being skilled enough to deal the same amount of extra damage as a warrior. I'm sorry, but no.

And Closet_Skeleton, as for changing class to get a new skill, suck it up and take the cross class penalty. Stealth (move silently/hide) doesn't come naturally to a wizard. So one must dedicate more time to practicing it, hence the more expensive the points are.

Beleriphon
2007-06-30, 04:13 PM
That could help, but they've gotten rid of a bad base attack bonus too.

I'm just not a fan of the damage bonus. Multiple attacks, I think, are just better.

Except that they do the same thing, and the way multiple attacks work just encourage standing and full attacking. The idea with the damage bonus to encourage movement in combat and still be able to dish out a decent amount of damage.

Dan_Hemmens
2007-06-30, 04:22 PM
Ah, but so many idiots are clammering about how this is how D&D should be! EN world is filled with them. So are the gaming stores that I frequent. So is my gaming group.

I think the problem is that people have different ideas about what D&D is "trying" to be.

A Star Wars game has a (semi) objective measure of success: the extent to which it feels like Star Wars.

D&D is very much a thing of its own. People who say "D&D should be more like this" really mean "the style in which I would like to play D&D is better supported by this ruleset than the current D&D ruleset."

For some people, a Wizard getting the same Damage Bonus as a Barbarian is stupid. For others it better reflects the fact that, in works of heroic fantasy, spellcasters quite often do fight with swords.

Beleriphon
2007-06-30, 06:42 PM
I think Saga does have some very good ideas that could be ported to D&D. In particular are the smaller number of classes and talent trees that emulate other talents. Thus you could have a Warrior class with a Paladin talent tree, Ranger talent tree, Armoured talent tree, et cetera. I think it would be pretty neat.

StickMan
2007-06-30, 07:19 PM
I'm an archer, and trust me, I can loose a lot more than five arrows in six seconds!

Wow that would make you the worlds fastest archer. Shooting around 12 arrows a minute is impressive and is the historical rate that professional archers fired at in battles. If you can fire off 50 arrows in one minute with any freak degree of accuracy you really would be a world record champ. So you will have to forgive me if I think you just lied and thought you would get away with it.

Jades
2007-06-30, 10:01 PM
Wow that would make you the worlds fastest archer. Shooting around 12 arrows a minute is impressive and is the historical rate that professional archers fired at in battles. If you can fire off 50 arrows in one minute with any freak degree of accuracy you really would be a world record champ. So you will have to forgive me if I think you just lied and thought you would get away with it.

No no, I've lost hundreds of arrows in a matter of seconds... I swear I just set them down.

I misread the post, and thought it to be a snide comment about how steep the penalties of multiple attacks are. "Loose" as in to misplace, not "Loose" as in fire.

Bel, the while it is true that the standard "I stand still and swing at you, then you stand still and swing at me" tactic is the most basic one available, there are plenty of PrCs that allow you to move and get extra attacks. Dervish and Blade Dancer come to mind.

And the system that you are lamenting over is True20. Three base classes, from which you can spring dang near any class from D&D. It also has spellcasting as a skill, something that I am in favor of.

Dan, I agree that it comes to a difference in opinion of what D&D should be. And while my list of house rules for my campaigns is about three pages long, thats all that I think that they should be. House Rules. My personal opinion on house rules is that they should always add to the system, never take things away. I'd have to house rule a damage bonus out, so I do not support it.

If a wizard wants to use a long sword so much, they can take a feat and be just as proficient as a barbarian. If they want to be a warrior wizard, multiclass. That's what it is there for.

Beleriphon
2007-07-01, 01:03 AM
And both are prestige classes. With Saga I an do the same thing at level 3. All the iterative attacks do give you a chance for more damage, the same thing that a level based damage bonus does.

[quote]And the system that you are lamenting over is True20. Three base classes, from which you can spring dang near any class from D&D. It also has spellcasting as a skill, something that I am in favor of.

I'm not terribly impressed with True20, it tries to be too generic for my tastes.


If a wizard wants to use a long sword so much, they can take a feat and be just as proficient as a barbarian. If they want to be a warrior wizard, multiclass. That's what it is there for.

The problem occurs that multiclassing is not that great in D&D. Saga makes it very easy in that all of your major abilities are tied to your character level, not specific class levels. In particular skills come to mind for this type of functionality.

Ultimately that Saga is really good for Star Wars. I don't think that everything would port correctly for D&D givent hat D&D is a generic fantasy rule set.

Dhavaer
2007-07-01, 01:10 AM
I misread the post, and thought it to be a snide comment about how steep the penalties of multiple attacks are. "Loose" as in to misplace, not "Loose" as in fire.

That would be 'lose'.

TheThan
2007-07-01, 04:03 AM
I just got my copy of saga edditon today. I like a lot of what I see, however there are things that don’t make sense to me and sort of bug me. But like with most RPGs you have to take the good with the bad. Or house rule the bad away.

I’m starting up a tabletop campaign soon so we’ll see how it goes.

Carrion_Humanoid
2007-07-01, 09:22 AM
Oh yes, I have another question. Damage threshold, when they exceed it, do you loose the limb, or is it paralized?

North
2007-07-01, 01:30 PM
Oh yes, I have another question. Damage threshold, when they exceed it, do you loose the limb, or is it paralized?

I dont have the book with me but IIRC you move a step down the condition scale. which is a really good idea. you get shot bad your not going to be able to fight at full capacity. And theres also some talents that let you affect the condition modifier directly. One of the Scoundrel talents "Dastardly Strike* if you hit they move a step down the condition modifier.

There is a Talent in one of the Jedi classes that does let you cut limbs off. Cant remember the specifics tho.

StickMan
2007-07-01, 01:36 PM
I know that one of the old books had rules for losing a limb. Basicly it happens when you score two critical hits in a row and both are confirmed. Which limb had to deal with how much damage you were dealt I think.

TheThan
2007-07-01, 02:13 PM
Limb removal
To remove a limb from an enemy you first must be wielding a slashing or energy melee weapon. Then you must score a critical hit on your enemy, then you’re confirmation roll must also score a critical hit. The player then rolls damage as normal and applies it to the target’s wound points as usual.

DM must immediately roll a 1d4 (or number of dice corresponding to the number of limbs the creature has). The number of the dice corresponds to the limbs of the creature hit by the critical. The left hand is equal to 1, right hand is, 2 left leg is 3, and the right leg is 4 and so on until you have all the limbs accounted for. Then roll the dice and determine which are sliced off. The creature is considered crippled, can only move at half speed (cannot run or charge) and can perform no special actions.


I used to use this house rule when I DMed the revised edition. This way it’s possible to cut off people’s arms but something that’s not going to happen too often to loose that dramatic effect. I’m not sure how I would do one for Saga edition but then again it looks like they covered it.

ray53208
2007-07-01, 09:16 PM
here is the official errata thread:
http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=864328

here is a link to the saga edition errata page on wotc:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=starwars/article/sagaederrata

here is a link to the official saga edition character sheet in pdf format:
http://www.wizards.com/starwars/downloads/SW_charsheet.pdf

here is the first web enhancement for saga edition:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=starwars/article/sagaenhancement1

here is the official FAQ thread:
http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=865406

hope this helps!

Pendragonx
2007-07-02, 12:12 PM
I know that one of the old books had rules for losing a limb. Basicly it happens when you score two critical hits in a row and both are confirmed. Which limb had to deal with how much damage you were dealt I think.

the new method of doing this in Saga Edition works if you have the talent 'Severing Strike'.. it doesn't rely on criticals, but instead if you're about to kill someone you can choose to chop a limb off instead.. .it's meant as a way for Jedi to show restraint I believe. ..there's also an official Optional Rule to house rule the use of that talent for all classes (but with an attack penalty or something).

ray53208
2007-07-02, 12:27 PM
i call severing strike "pulling a skywalker". its a pretty cheap move, like the sucker punch or kicking someone in the family jewels.

Closet_Skeleton
2007-07-02, 06:29 PM
No no, I've lost hundreds of arrows in a matter of seconds... I swear I just set them down.

I misread the post, and thought it to be a snide comment about how steep the penalties of multiple attacks are. "Loose" as in to misplace, not "Loose" as in fire.

That would be 'lose' not 'loose', though dropping a ton of arrows might be considered letting them 'loose', as in "cry havok, let loose the dogs of war" because they're the same word. 'Lose' however is a differant but possibly related word.

edit: looks like Dhaevar Ninja'd me, except a whole day earlier just because I didn't finish reading the thread.

Think about it differantly. HP in part represents luck and your ability to make deadly attacks less deadly. A higher level character does more damage to counter out the fact that enemies of equal CR have large ammounts of hp. Also, in Saga edition few classes are bad at combat to warrant having a lower damage bonus and the Weapon Specialisation ability, melee smash (is that in Saga or just d20 modern?) and even power attack (come on, the feat is about using your skill to do damage even if it has inacurate brute conotations) will mean that the Soldier is doing more skill based damage anyway.