A Star Wars TTRPG worth playing.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Sun Sep 07, 2014 9:27 am

Would Shadowrun's ruleset work?

Pretty aliens are elves
short aliens are dwarves
ugly aliens are orcs
large aliens are trolls
Jedi are adepts

As for droids, I'm sure there's some vaguely appropriate rules in Shadowrun for that, like a cyberzombie or a humanoid drone to start with.

JesterZero · Post by **JesterZero** » Sun Sep 07, 2014 7:30 pm

Dean wrote:You may have noticed that Iron Man only uses AOE weapons, and that is because in Saga AOE weapons are the bomb.

I see what you did there.

Krusk · Post by **Krusk** » Sun Sep 07, 2014 7:31 pm

Dean, thanks a lot. Both builds detailed so far sound like a blast. I might try to convince my group to run a highly optimized star wars game once our current DND game ends. Regardless, I might try to play some sort of Iron Man build in a future game.

I don't have high hopes for my group, but who knows, maybe if given actual guidance on what to do, they won't be against it?

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 5:12 am

Dean wrote:Iron Man:
if it weren't for one piece of equipment in the KOTOR rulebook called the Combat Implant.

That, or the Exotic Weapon Master Talent.

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 5:48 am

Yeah that's a good talent and it's from one of the few good prestige classes in the game. It comes online much later than the combat implant though which is cheap enough that you could afford it at chargen.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 4:35 am

Why does Iron Man need to be a soldier?

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 5:29 am

Iron Man wants to be a soldier for a few reasons. Soldiers get the best BAB progression and basically every good feat has a BAB minimum. So a high BAB means a much faster feat progression with the damage multiplying feats like Dual Weapon Mastery and Rapid Shot and others of that ilk. Soldier also has lots of armor increasing talents and starts with the medium armor proficiency feat which this character likes because he's always wearing medium or heavy armor depending on how high level he is.

Basically Soldier is the best class for Iron Man because it allows him to leverage the few ability pools Saga gives you, that is feats and talents, most optimally. If you wanted to argue that a superior version of the character could be made using a Jedi chasis I wouldn't reject that idea out of hand. I would imagine that the Jedi version would start off much worse because it would have a number of feats to grab before the concept began functioning, but I might believe that it would end at a higher power level. It's possible that an optimal path might be to start as Soldier 6, dip Scout for level 7, and then go Jedi thereafter because the Iron Man concept is fully functional by then so you might as well start gathering up psychic powers. That's a pretty good idea.

Seerow · Post by **Seerow** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 5:34 am

So the game didn't include any bullshit about force powers being inhibited by armor?

I just always kind of assumed that was a thing.

Edit: While I'm asking, how do force powers in Saga work? I've never even looked at the system, despite hearing good things about it.

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 6:03 am

Yeah you can use force powers freely in armor. Being a force user in Saga is almost exactly like being a Warblade or Swordsage in 3.5. You have a few different force powers that you know and as you use each one it goes on cooldown for the remainder of the encounter. You can reactivate all your powers with a minute of rest. You can reactivate one power immediately if you spend an action point (called force points in Saga) or if you roll a nat 20 when making your Use the Force roll, which is a roll you have to make whenever you use a Force power to see how good you do it. For instance Force Choke does 2d6 damage at DC 15, 4d6 at 20, and 6d6 at 25.

The Force system only really gets cool when you start tacking feats and talents onto it to modify how your particular character uses it. It's possible to make characters who can cast one power over and over again like the Emperor with his lightning. You can make characters that quicken their force powers and fire off a lot of them each turn. Once you start making it your own it becomes fun.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 6:52 am

Seerow wrote:So the game didn't include any bullshit about force powers being inhibited by armor?

I just always kind of assumed that was a thing.

Edit: While I'm asking, how do force powers in Saga work? I've never even looked at the system, despite hearing good things about it.

If you want to use armor (and you want), you need one Level in Soldier (but you will want 3).
If you want to play an jedi you don't need jedi Levels, but at least 1 makes good sense.
Probably not at char lvl 1

Emerald · Post by **Emerald** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 5:35 pm

Korwin wrote:
Seerow wrote:So the game didn't include any bullshit about force powers being inhibited by armor?

I just always kind of assumed that was a thing.

Edit: While I'm asking, how do force powers in Saga work? I've never even looked at the system, despite hearing good things about it.
If you want to use armor (and you want), you need one Level in Soldier (but you will want 3).
If you want to play an jedi you don't need jedi Levels, but at least 1 makes good sense.

To expand on those two points: In Saga, you add your full character level to each defense, and an armor bonus replaces your CL bonus to Reflex by default, so wearing armor becomes a bad idea past a certain level. The solder's Armored Defense talent lets you use the higher of your CL and your armor bonus, Improved Armored Defense lets you use the higher of armor bonus and (HL + armor/2), and you can pick those up with 1 and 3 levels of Soldier respectively because you get talents at odd levels.

The system works that way so you get the aesthetic you see in the movies, that nameless hordes of NPCs wear armor, named characters generally don't wear armor, and named characters who do wear armor are really tough.

The Jedi class in Saga isn't "the Force-user class" because you can take Force talents instead of class talents with any class. Jedi gives you lightsaber talents and Jedi-specific stuff for negotiation and Dark Sider hunting, and they don't even get the feat that gives you more powers as a bonus feat because that would make it the only real choice for Force-users. So if you want to deflect blaster bolts you'd need to take at least one level in Jedi, but if you want to focus exclusively on Force powers you don't need to (and in fact it can be better to go Scoundrel 1/Noble 1/Scout 1/Soldier 1/Jedi 1 in any order to pick up five Force talents in a row).

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Fri Sep 12, 2014 7:36 am

Continuing on with this series I've gotten to what is the most popular "broken" build of Saga's: the Deadeye Bounty Hunter, often called the Condition Track Killer or CTK for short. There was lots of discussion about the CTK on Saga boards. This is not because the build is better than anything else here, merely because it is a much more obvious optimization process. The CTK uses the fact that Saga has a unified condition track instead of lots of minor conditions like stunned and dazed and bloodied. Saga just uses a 5 point track with increasing penalties to all die rolls as you go down it. You can drop someone down the condition track by using attacks that explicitly do so (often if a saving throw is failed) or by hitting someone with enough damage to pass their damage threshold which is a number equal to their Constitution+Level. The CTK stacks a number of feats and talents together to make it so that they lower their targets damage thresholds and when they do surpass them they drop them down multiple steps, ideally down all 5 steps in a single attack.

Their are two types of CTK, Snipers and Stun Gunners. Snipers use a feat called Steadying position which lets them count any target they're shooting at with a sniper as flat footed and they use that to trigger their condition track dropping abilities. Stun Gunners run around with dual high powered blasters set to stun. Stun Guns have short ranges but make dropping people down the condition track easier, so they mix it up in the middle of people that heavily debuff you with one hit and KO you in two.

CTK's were probably banned more than any other build in Saga. That's extremely weird to me. Sure, a well built CTK can drop almost any named character in the game in a single well aimed shot but they don't really have an answer to a room with 5 guys with guns in it and I'd say you run into that problem a lot more times than you fight Darth Vader. It's not like their trick is unstoppable either. The Iron Man character from before, for instance, could be flat footed directly in a CTK's iron sights and still probably win. With a massive stealth bonus and a massive AC it's unlikely the CTK would even get his world ending surprise round shot in. Even if he did he would have to contend with a character who's damage threshold was boosted by armor bonuses, DR, and a Shield Rating bringing his damage threshold into the 30's by level 12 which is the first level the CTK concept starts working (unlike the Iron Man which is running hot by 7th), and pumping out 35 damage with a 3d8 Sniper Rifle is not a reliable prospect.

I don't mean to disparage the CTK, it's cool and fun but it's strange to me that "Non-Flask Rogue" was the concept that Saga players considered a bridge too far. It's literally just a Rogue. It shouldn't be upsetting to people that a Rogue in a surprise round will kick ass because that has been their schtick since well before I was born.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Fri Sep 12, 2014 11:33 am

I can't say I'm too surprised to hear that. If there's anything I learned from playing Vampire it's that you can get away with all kinds of bullshit until you defeat the MC's pet NPC before they can even spit out "What is a man?"

Concise Locket · Post by **Concise Locket** » Fri Sep 12, 2014 1:11 pm

SW Saga provides little in the way of a mechanical challenge to an adventuring party that includes a half-competently built Jedi. Area effects are the only hindrance I've encountered and any GM who turns his stormtroopers or battle droids into squads of anti-Jedi grenadiers should be rightly called on his bullshit. On the other hand, respectful adherence to CRs leads to extremely dull encounters.

The system itself feels and plays like the slapdash cash grab it is. The only benefit I saw to WotC holding the license were some half-descent painted minis that I can port over to other sci-fi RPG systems.

erik · Post by **erik** » Fri Sep 12, 2014 4:36 pm

If grenades are really the answer to Jedi then I can see droids having a weapons package for that and soldiers hollering "Jedi! Switch to grenades!"

It would rightly be BS if that is always the first response tho.

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Sat Sep 13, 2014 5:54 pm

This is what I'm talking about. If you're playing Star Wars at a high op level you shouldn't worry about grenades. Their are selectable abilities you can take that solve that problem. Saga was just played at such an insanely high level of gentlemenly agreement that no one ever stopped bitching about Jedi's, grenades, and CTK's. Grenade launching enemies got tons of bitching and that is a problem solved forever by a one level dip, how fucking insane is that?

The Saga community and zeitgeist is interesting because it's exactly what would have happened in 3E if there had never been a pro high power segment of the population. So people bitch about Fireball and Rogues because the community accepted on a fundamental level that any option above basic Fighter, who in this game is basically Han Solo, was too powerful and would be discounted without discussion. Saga is, at least to the mid levels, a higher power game than core D&D but D&D is known as breaking the ceiling on power level and Saga is known as totally low powered and that is entirely because of their communities response to the rules and not the rules themselves.

This is what I've been saying the entire time. If you play Saga, by the books, with no limit on optimization you have an incredibly fun game. My last game of Saga saw my team infiltrating a base while I dropped onto it from orbit. They tried to maximize their positions within the base for the moment I arrived with the heavy ordinance we wouldn't have been able to sneak in. When I dropped in under a rain of my own missile fire and the klaxons went off we fought 60 stormtroopers, a squad of CTK's, a Grav-Tank and a whole squad of Arc Troopers who are the most elite troops in the Star Wars RPG. They missile launchers, grenades and heavy repeating blasters and they have SUPER action points called Destiny Points which can let them just declare the attack roll they are about to make is a nat 20 and crits, or let them act totally out of turn, or let them auto-negate an attack made on them. It was an awesome fight. My character was verging on unconscious from the CTK hits, one character had gone down but he'd get himself back up cause of some regeneration style abilities and the other two of us were still standing with hp left. So while what Concise Locket says about you needing to throw the CR guidelines out is true you will throw them out because you can massively surpass them and get to play in a game where you fight Rancors and AT-ST's and Tie Fighters in space and that shit is awesome.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Sun Sep 14, 2014 2:35 am

Just seriously Saga edition is terrible we have established this in detail in the past, Dean is all "but I can optimise boring incremental builds and maybe dumpster dive for the occasional cool droid equipment!" and "gentlemans agreement!" and "IronmanIronmanIronman" and frankly I have no idea why.

The SAGA community is and was tiny, and short lived. No one played it for more than five minutes, every ongoing d20 star wars game in my region ENDED shortly after they tried converting to boring 4E/D20 modern (yes the worst of both) love child that was Saga edition. And last time someone on this board said "Saga edition has flaws but is the basis to build a good game from!" they could not when called out actually point at ONE SINGLE MECHANIC AS WRITTEN to actually keep.

Why this zombies back up like this I have no idea and Dean needs to present SOMETHING other than "gentleman's agreement to ignore all the vast failings and then you can optimize boring shitty games too!" as an explanation for his apparent Saga erection.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Tue Sep 16, 2014 6:53 pm

PhoneLobster wrote:Just seriously Saga edition is terrible we have established this in detail in the past,

yeah, I heard you Claim that before. Link?
I myself like SW Saga Edition...

Concise Locket · Post by **Concise Locket** » Tue Sep 16, 2014 9:34 pm

Over my total time sitting at game tables I've heard less pedantic whining over D&D alignment than I have over d20 Star Wars' Light Side/Dark Side points system. I'm on the fence regarding bennie pools but I prefer EotE's Light-Side-Benefits-Player/Dark-Side-Benefits-GM system over whatever d6/d20 have presented.

I would prefer a Shadowrun 4E-inspired dice pool system as a starting point, at least for Force/magic and general combat. Charagen and vehicle combat would need to be rethought from scratch.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Tue Sep 16, 2014 9:38 pm

PhoneLobster wrote:Why this zombies back up like this I have no idea and Dean needs to present SOMETHING other than "gentleman's agreement to ignore all the vast failings and then you can optimize boring shitty games too!" as an explanation for his apparent Saga erection.

You apparently didn't read Dean's post, because that's not how he used "gentleman's agreement".

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Tue Sep 16, 2014 10:10 pm

Look Phonelobsters gonna do the only thing he does, where when he personally disagrees with someone he will write strawmans and say that you said them. Its uninteresting and constant and engaging with it just means he will threadshit with false quoting you until you stop responding.

On topic, ill post some stuff of the force builds later but they aren't that interesting to me. The punch Droid builds and melee wookies are cooler and ill writeup them too

erik · Post by **erik** » Tue Sep 16, 2014 10:45 pm

Korwin wrote:
PhoneLobster wrote:Just seriously Saga edition is terrible we have established this in detail in the past,
yeah, I heard you Claim that before. Link?
I myself like SW Saga Edition...

I forum searched Star Wars Saga and read through these a few days ago since I had the same thoughtness

2007
2009
2011

Main complaints I gleaned were that it is the bastard child/intermediary of d20 Modern and 4e D&D. Presumably it has the same problems with skills, class saves, and boring classes. With some scheming you can create less boring classes as Dean has described, but I could totally see non-optimizers making shitty d20 characters instead.

Dean's descriptions of class options sound awesome on their face, but even the happiest of them bring sub-3e caster levels of excitement, and I didn't hear anything promising about vehicle/starship mechanics.

If all I had seen was Dean's class ideas, I'd be jazzed about Saga. Knowing it comes from d20 modern style classes... I'd be intensely skeptical about it being a good game. It sounds like a lower-powered 3e D&D but not nearly as shitty as d20 Modern.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Wed Sep 17, 2014 2:11 am

Erik seems to have pretty much covered the details.

The basics of it is that Saga basically has d20 modern "talents" which are occasionally as exciting as holding your basic rogue sneak attack dice (only with more limitations on when you get them) ransom one at a time in return for one by one passing up every other class feature you ever get, or more commonly are some incremental tiny +1 to something something.

It attempted some bullshit proto-4E thing with "fixing" skill accounting and defenses... but never ran the numbers and broke the RNG at level 1 with options that enabled you to max out the majority of your d20 style skill progression as an entry level character AND then turn that into your substitute for your basic attack, and your defense, and then target a non standard low value defense type on your victims with it. And then failed to actually do anything about incemental skill rank accounting because you still had to calculate your incremental skill rank bonus totals based on various multiples of character level anyway and then just add in the portion that got hacked out apparently for no other reason than to break the RNG at level one with.

Dean's "awesome builds" are for the most part just him jizzing all over the idea of adding together entire 20 level builds of +1 to attack class "talents" and pretending it's exciting. There is some other crap in there like abusing the broken implementation of the incredibly stupid concept of "instead of a class feature have a one off CASH PRIZE!" as if that's somehow a good point rather than a glaring failure of the system... but basically it all boils down to some pretty dull ass builds in a dull ass system that tried to prevent breakage by keeping all the abilities boring and the numbers low... then broke anyway because the incompetents behind its design included such luminaries as the guy who has yet to get around to writing fucking E20.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Wed Sep 17, 2014 3:55 am

PhoneLobster wrote:Dean's "awesome builds" are for the most part just him jizzing all over the idea of adding together entire 20 level builds of +1 to attack class "talents" and pretending it's exciting.

Dean hasn't actually posted a single build (a paragraph description isn't a build), has only specifically mentioned mid-levels so far, and has yet to mention a single +1 talent. None of this adds up to 20-level builds of +1 features, and all of his excitement has been through comparisons to objective standards, such as shooting down TIE fighters.

If you're going to critique Saga, try not making up stuff, mkay?

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Wed Sep 17, 2014 6:21 am

erik wrote:
Korwin wrote:
PhoneLobster wrote:Just seriously Saga edition is terrible we have established this in detail in the past,
yeah, I heard you Claim that before. Link?
I myself like SW Saga Edition...
I forum searched Star Wars Saga and read through these a few days ago since I had the same thoughtness

2007
2009
2011

Main complaints I gleaned were that it is the bastard child/intermediary of d20 Modern and 4e D&D. Presumably it has the same problems with skills, class saves, and boring classes.

Never got into 4e, but if it would have been more like SWSE I would have.
Major difference I do know is multiclassing, which was heavily encouraged in SWSE and non existent in 4e (until late in its live-cycle?).

With some scheming you can create less boring classes as Dean has described, but I could totally see non-optimizers making shitty d20 characters instead.

I remember SWSE as relatively hard to make really shitty chars. But that might be an perception thing.

Dean's descriptions of class options sound awesome on their face, but even the happiest of them bring sub-3e caster levels of excitement, and I didn't hear anything promising about vehicle/starship mechanics.

Pro: Vehicle adaption rules in Scum and Villainy (also there the equipment adation rules)
Con: If you wanted to be good at starship combat, you got worse at personal combat (unless you got to fight on an combat bike against enemies on foot).

If all I had seen was Dean's class ideas, I'd be jazzed about Saga. Knowing it comes from d20 modern style classes... I'd be intensely skeptical about it being a good game. It sounds like a lower-powered 3e D&D but not nearly as shitty as d20 Modern.

Modern style? Like Strong hero, fast hero, etc. – false
Like Talent-trees? I liked them in Saga. Every class had 3 (?) talent trees, PRC had some exclusive and some base talent trees, if you where force sensitive you got access to some additional trees with every class.

virgil wrote:
PhoneLobster wrote:Dean's "awesome builds" are for the most part just him jizzing all over the idea of adding together entire 20 level builds of +1 to attack class "talents" and pretending it's exciting.
Dean hasn't actually posted a single build (a paragraph description isn't a build), has only specifically mentioned mid-levels so far, and has yet to mention a single +1 talent. None of this adds up to 20-level builds of +1 features, and all of his excitement has been through comparisons to objective standards, such as shooting down TIE fighters.

If you're going to critique Saga, try not making up stuff, mkay?

Yeah, it was actually me who posted a full build. The dark side Body Snatcher/Immortal...