I know that there have to be more complete nerds on this forum than just me, who also happen to enjoy Pen & Paper roleplaying. You know, stuff like Dungeons & Dragons. So, to benefit all of these people and maybe get a few more into the hobbie, here is a complete review of the new official system for Star Wars published by Wizards of the Coast (the people that brought you Dungeons & Dragons) -- Saga Edition.
It's hard to really understand how different Saga Edition is, and why this is a good thing, without understanding the terrible history of officially licensed Star Wars roleplaying games. So here is a brief history lesson:
* Star Wars d6, first edition: published by West End Games in 1987. This game was both broken and severely retarded.
* Star Wars d6, second edition: published by West End Games in 1992. This game was far less retarded than the original, but still both broken and somewhat retarded. It was actually a good gaming system if you and your players accepted the fact that jedi were simply better than everybody else, houseruled away the retarded dark side points rule, and gave all your players free character points to spend on knowledge skills (and only knowledge skills).
* Star Wars d20: published by Wizards of the Coast in 2000. This game was pretty much a huge step backwards from d6 second edition in every possible way, and was both severely broken and severely retarded. It's not the worst roleplaying book ever published by Wizards (that would be Weapons of Legacy) or even the worst Star Wars supplement (that would be Power of the Jedi), but it was really bad. This book was written by J.D. Wiker, one of the worst professional game designers ever. This guy has the inverse Midas touch: everything he works on becomes shit. Seriously, it would be pretty amazing if it wasn't so pathetic.
* Star Wars Saga Edition: published by Wizards of the Coast in 2007. This is like a massive breath of fresh air. Reasonably balanced compared to past editions, no retarded dark side rules...it's got some hideous warts, but comparing it to Star Wars d20 is like comparing a thoroughbred stallion to your grandmother's starving, dying mule.
Okay, with that out of the way, let's get on to the actual book review.
First of all, my biggest complaint: the artwork. Instead of commissioning new artwork that didn't suck, they recycled all the retardedly bad art from Star Wars d20. This makes reading the book an exercise in masochism at times.
Introduction
Starting things off we have what we normally have to start. Nothing special to see here that we haven't seen in Dungeons & Dragons: it basically tells you how pen and paper games with dice work.
Character creation is fairly similar to what you're familiar with in Dungeons & Dragons, with the same abilities and everything, but significantly simpler because there's no ability bloat and all named bonuses are the same type.
Statistics are interesting. Hit points are as you suspect, but saves and AC have been rolled into three different "defense" statistics: fortitude, reflex, and will (what a shocker). Something immediately apparent when looking at the saves, and an excellent theme in this book, is that your character level (they call it "heroic level") has as much to do with your statistics as your other abilities.
That's important, and I'm going to say it again. Your level has as much to do with your statistics as your other abilities. Saga Edition operates on the (correct) conceit that the heroes should be reasonably good at everything. To that end, they have you adding your level or half your level to just about every check you could possibly make. This represents Star Wars reasonably well and is a great breath of fresh air from the Dungeons & Dragons conceit that you are supposed to be totally awesome within your niche and suck amazingly everywhere else (which is only partially true or not true at all for casters, but that's another story).
We've also got, instead of just HP, a "damage threshold" and a condition track that taking damage that exceeds your threshold moves you down. Moving down the condition track gives you a number of sucky penalties and debuffs, and is a pretty good idea for a game that attempts to model Star Wars.
Chapter 1: Abilities
This is identical to how it works in Dungeons & Dragons and isn't really worth covering here.
Chapter 2: Species
You can be a human and get the normal D&D human benefits (bonus skill point at each level, bonus feat to start), or a non-human and get some stat modifiers and other abilities. If that sounds familiar, that's because it is: it works the same way in Dungeons & Dragons. Only here instead of skill points we have "trained skills" which is basically the same as maxing the same skills at every level.
Notable races include Humans (who are always awesome), Cereans (+2 overall to stats, but they're all mental and -2 physical; also they get to REROLL ANY INITIATIVE IF THEY FEEL LIKE IT), Duros (for sucking), Kel Dor (they get to REROLL ANY USE THE FORCE CHECK I THEY FEEL LIKE IT which also can apply to initiative), and...man, I'm bored, I'm just going to skip ahead to the next chapter.
Chapter 3 - Classes
Lots of uninspiring artwork, and five classes to pick from. Before I head in on the classes, I just want to make note on their design philosophy: they are not supposed to represent a character's profession or in-universe existance at all. The designers have intended them to be entirely metagame collections of abilities. I find that an admirable goal and one that I've been pushing for in game design for ages.
The problem is...that's not the way it is. Because they also included prestige classes! Those are shorter classes that are also supposed to be collections of abilities but, hey, they've got roleplaying restrictions and other prerequisites! Gotcha! This causes some retarded metagame problems that manifest themselves in strange ways in-game that will be discussed later when I get to prestige classes.
When you take your first level in a class, you get a bonus to your defenses depending on the class. To make multiclassing not as awesome, these bonuses don't stack, you only add your best class bonus at any time. Every even level in a class, you get a bonus feat. Every odd level, you get a "talent" that you can pick from the class's list of talents.
Okay, now for the classes:
* Jedi. Who couldn't see this one coming? They get a +1 to all their defenses. Huge hit points (best of any class, equivalent to the soldier). Full BAB. You only get 2 + int trained skills though, one of which is obviously going to be Use the Force. You get a decent number of starting feats (3), two of which are pretty useful (Force Sensitivity and Lightsaber proficiency), one of which is not (Simple Weapon proficiency). Your useful talents center around being awesome with your lightsaber (block blaster bolts, parry melee attacks with Use the Force checks) and making the fact that you only get 2 + int trained skills not suck by turning absolutely everything into a Use the Force check. There's also a talent that moves people down the condition track when you talk to them. I'm not kidding; as a jedi, you can seriously make someone wounded just by dissing them really badly (can't knock them out, though). You don't get any force powers by default; you have to blow your bonus feats on them.
* Noble. OH GOD THE HORRIBLE ARTWORK AGAIN. As far as I can tell this class only exists for you to twink yourself out if you're playing a droid by using the Wealth talent (more on that below) or accomplish a crappy version of the D&D fear spells, which would be extremely awesome if it didn't only work on people your level or lower. Oh, and they have 3/4ths BAB and 6 + int trained skills. This class is basically one level long, three if you want the fear talents, or four if you want the fear talents and a bonus feat before leaving. Anything beyond that is stupid, but it's an unbeatable one-level dip.
* Scoundrel. Ah, the Han Solo class. The scoundrel is...not terribly exciting. 3/4ths BAB, 4 + int trained skills, pistol proficiency and Point Blank Shot as starting feats. You've got some neat talents; Dastardly Strike is awesome, and you get Sneak Attack which is sort of gimpy due to the lack of multiple attacks in this game but still okay, but that's about it. The class is otherwise unimpressive.
* Scout. You get proficiency in both pistols and rifles to start (woohoo!). 3/4ths BAB (lame). You get some check rerolling talents (Initiative and Perception, Stealth), Uncanny dodge (two talents), Evasion...it's not a bad class, really.
* Soldier. You're the only class with Armor Proficiency to start (both light and medium), and you get all the Weapon Proficiencies aside from lightsabers. Definitely a solid first level. 3 + int modifier trained skills. Your talents include making armor not suck to the point where you'd actually want to wear armor, Unbalance Opponent (great for melee combat), great abilities that you can't actually use because your class doesn't have that skill (Draw Fire), and Devastating Attack (not bad, really). A good one-level dip before entering jedi, three if you want both armor talents.
Multiclassing notes:
* You only take one starting feat from the new class's list when you add a new class. So basically, take Soldier as your first class.
Aside from that, all this should be familiar if you've played Dungeons & Dragons.
Chapter 4 - Skills
Here's where things depart from the familiar embrace of Dungeons & Dragons. Here's what a skill check is:
1d20 + half your level + key ability mod + random other mods
That's right. No skill ranks to speak of. If you're trained, add +5. That's it.
Skills are basically D&D stuff with some of the stupid removed, folded together, or renamed. Initiative is now a skill which you roll at the start of combat to determine action order, instead of just a flat number. Use the Force is also a skill and used in a number of places if you're a jedi. Some skills (like Climb) are still retarded because even though flight doesn't exist in this game, jetpacks do.
Chapter 5 - Feats
Most of these suffer from the same problem that feats in Dungeons & Dragons do (that is, they suck). However, in Saga, feats are the only way to get iterative attacks. Which means in practice that everyone ends up taking Double Attack and Triple Attack, and all jedi end up taking at least Dual Weapon Mastery I and II. Vehicular Combat is required by anyone who wants to be a pilot. Beyond that there are some gems, but most is crap that will be forgotten about as soon as more splatbooks come out.
That's really okay, though. Melee fighters don't depend on their feats to be competitive because casters don't exist in Star Wars, so the fact that most feats aren't all that good or isn't a problem at all.
Chapter 6 - The Force
Blah blah force points blah blah force powers. Basically, everyone's got a bunch of force points that they get whenever they level up. They work like action points, and sometimes jedi can trade them in to boost some power. Action points aren't really my favorite mechanic, so I'm pretty ambivalent to this part of Saga.
Wait? What's this? Retarded dark side rules alert! Dark side points are back. If you commit an "evil act", you get a dark side point. If your number of dark side points equals your wisdom score, you "become a GM character". That's right. By the Rules As Written, you cannot play an evil game. Obviously everyone is going to ignore this if they're playing an evil game, but that rule has no business being in the book in the first place.
Dark side points are retarded. They were retarded when West End Games first introduced them as a game mechanic, and they remain retarded twenty years later. They are a mechanic that does nothing but foster a player-versus-DM attitude, something that tabletop games are not supposed to have. The DM ought to have enough trust in the players to let the players roleplay their characters by themselves. If the player wants to roleplay his slow descent into the dark side, that's fine and can make for some totally cool stories (and has). Instead you have the DM slapping you with a dark side point every time you perform an "evil action". And some of those "evil actions" are so arguable and stupid that they resemble the 3rd edition Player's Handbook definitions of Law and Chaos.
Enough about the retardedness of dark side points, though. Let's get on to the force powers!
It works like this: you take a feat, and get some number of powers based on your wisdom score. These powers don't form a pool, though. This mechanic is a bit stupid in that you pick a power, and the number of times you pick that power is equal to the number of times you can use it in a combat. Why do you have to use a mind trick if you've already blown your force lightning? I have no idea, it's kind of retarded. And it doesn't seem like a major balance concern to me to just let your number of power usages form a pool and let you cast your powers spontaneously. Err, "use". Right. This is the force, not magic. Hard to distinguish between them sometimes.
A review of the powers:
* Battle Strike: A decent power, but not altogether that useful with the way the casting/recovery mechanic works. You can basically do it once per combat unless you spend a lot of feats or only pick this power.
* Dark Rage: This is pretty sweet, but see Battle Strike (unless you're willing to spend a force point).
* Farseeing: It's scrying, if you spend a force point.
* Force Disarm: Pretty good if you don't have Improved Disarm, meh otherwise. The problem is mostly that it (along with Improved Sunder) make lightsaber fights both boring and stupid. Basically, everyone has to carry around a bag full of lightsabers because otherwise the fight ends when one opponent sunders the other's weapon. That's really retarded and not part of any Star Wars movie I've ever seen. I suggest making lightsabers immune to this power (and Improved Sunder) for that reason.
* Force Grip: This power is awesome as long as you don't use it in combat.
* Force Lightning: This power is great. Decent damage, but the real kicker is that it takes the target one point down the condition track. Two points if you blow a force point.
* Force Slam: This is pretty respectable. Basically, it's an area attack that knocks prone everyone in a cone. No other class has this sort of pseudo battlefield control ability.
* Force Stun: It's Force Lightning without the damage and hits Will defense instead, but every five points your check beats their defense, it's another point down the condition track. Definitely awesome, and also unencumbered by that dark side tag. How many other effects actually target will defense? Not many.
* Force Thrust: It's a bull rush that uses your Use the Force check instead. Meh.
* Mind Trick: I think we all know how this one works.
* Move Object: It's a lot less broken than Dungeons & Dragon's Telekinesis, that's for sure.
* Negate Energy: Pointless. You don't need to spend a feat to be able to do this with your lightsaber.
* Rebuke: Like spell turning, but for the force. A pretty great way to defend against an enemy Force Stunning you.
* Sever Force: Oh, here we go. The single most retarded thing printed in Star Wars d20 makes a comeback. It somehow wasn't enough for the authors to just let it die and everyone to pretend it never existed, they had to resurrect it and reprint it. At least here it's not totally, stupidly broken, but it's still retarded.
* Surge: Useless. Just wear a jetpack.
* Vital Transfer: Well, I guess if your party doesn't have a cleric, it's okay. Oh, wait, this is Star Wars, clerics don't exist here. How useful this is depends entirely on the DM.
Next up is Force Talents. You can pick these whenever you gain a talent if you have the Force Sensitive feat. Most of these involve substituting your Use the Force check for other skill checks like Pilot or Perception, or wasting your force points in some fashion. The dark side ones aren't horrible though (+1 to all defenses for you and your allies until the end of combat for an action; use a power as a swift action instead of a standard action), and you can pick up the Star Wars equivalent of Shape Spell for your Force Slam power too.
Next up is Force Techniques. These are basically class features of some prestige classes in a later chapter, and have various small effects (though one of them lets you get a force point back that you spend in an encounter for free -- that's pretty nice).
Finally there are Force Secrets. They are basically metamagic feats for your force powers, and you need to spend a force point to use them. Quicken Spell, err, Power, sadly makes an appearance here.
The rest of the chapter is a bunch of flavor text about various force-using traditions.
Chapter 7 - Heroic Traits
Again with the shitty art. This chapter is basically about roleplaying, and has some random tables to roll on for stuff like your weight and height if you're too much of a lazy asshole to come up with your own character.
Chapter 8 - Equipment
There's some comprehensible but super-situational rules about legality of weapons, licenses, etc. Then there's the items. Basically, everything you'd expect to find. Of particular annoyance to me was how "Blaster Carbine" and "Blaster Rifle" were both listed, and the only difference was that the blaster rifle was strictly better. There's everything you'd expect to find in Star Wars plus grenades, and it's all very generic. I'm sure that in the future there's going to be a supplement with fine-grained differences between specific weapon models for people who like that sort of thing.
There's also lodging and lifestyle, but unlike in Shadowrun, it doesn't seem that important. Really depends on the DM.
Chapter 9 - Combat
Remember Dungeons & Dragons? This works the same way, except that grappling is a lot simpler. Also now we have that condition track and damage threshold (which is equal to your fortitude defense + your size modifier, if any). That's pretty scary at low levels and not so much at high levels when your fortitude defense goes up faster than damage does. By taking three swift actions, you can move back up the condition track.
Anyway, it's D&D combat, but since everyone is a lot less powerful in Star Wars and there are no mages, it runs a lot differently and tends to last longer.
Chapter 10 - Vehicles
The rules here for vehicle combat are a lot better than anything seen in Star Wars d20. 2-D vs. 3-D isn't mentioned at all, a massive improvement from the Star Wars d20 system which had space combat taking place in 2-D. The only problem I can see right now is that missiles are still retardedly good, with pretty much no reason for people to use them over lasers. Obviously, that's not Star Wars.
Chapter 11 - Droids
This is the chapter that's all about playing drouds, and here's where things get abusive. Remember the one-level dip I mentioned in the Noble class earlier for the wealth talent? Here's where you can abuse it.
Droids don't have constitution modifiers (a completely retarded rule left over from D&D's construct type) and you can choose your "degree" which is basically your stat modifiers. Physical stats are considered better than mental stats here, and any physical stat boost is hit with a corresponding double mental stat drop. You can choose to be medium or small.
More things of note for building droid PCs:
* You get a heuristic processor and two arms by default.
* You take one level of any of the non-jedi classes (that means you take your first level in noble)
* You can spend up to 1k credits on yourself to start.
* You can buy more movement modes. The best choice is obviously flying, which is basically superman-like flight (those of you who are veteran D&D players know how this works).
* Get yourself telescoping hands (or other appendages) and be Inspector Gadget!
* Go nuts getting yourself all sorts of crazy crap that the players can't get. Darkvision, armor made out of arbitrarium, a shield generator (up to SR 15 for a medium droid), whatever weapons you desire, etc.
* Then, if you ever get tired of your Wealth talent, you can reprogram it into something more combat-related. Reprogramming can really get quite ridiculous.
The only downside to playing a droid is your lack of a constitution score and inability to take levels in jedi. That's it. If you aren't playing a jedi, there's really no reason not to play a droid.
Chapter 12 - Prestige Classes
Here's where things get retarded. Prestige classes work like this: once you get tired of the all the crap talents from the five core classes, you take prestige classes instead. Only now, instead of being generic, they actually have flavor and some even have roleplaying prerequisites to get in.
Needless to say, that's retarded and is the cause of some serious in-game stupidity. Here's one example:
The Jedi Knight prestige class gets a talent that lets them add their dexterity bonus to damage in place of their strength bonus. Sounds pretty cool, right? After all, lightsaber duelists in the movies pull all sorts of crazy crap in terms of maneuvers and generally look like dex-based fighters instead of str-based fighters.
Well, there's just one small problem: the Jedi Knight prestige class requires you to be a jedi to get in, and the corresponding Sith Apprentice class doesn't have a similar ability. What does that end up meaning in-universe? It means that all dex-based lightsaber combatants are either jedi or fallen jedi. No dex-based lightsaber fighter would ever be a straight sith, because they would be simply inferior due to lack of that talent. Needless to say, that's retarded and completely goes against the spirit of the movies.
It gets even worse than that. Even a jedi can't pick up that talent until they hit level 8. That means that for the first 7 levels of their life the dex-based jedi is going to be depending on a blaster for doing damage offensively over their lightsaber due to the blaster's superior damage dice. While I'm sure that a jedi who is worldly enough to use blasters would make for a really interesting character, the in-universe implications of this are retarded. I don't remember Obi-Wan Kenobi relying on his blaster up until he hit level 8, then suddenly switching over to his lightsaber.
There's also the problem that the Jedi Master PrC gets straight-up better abilities than the Sith Lord PrC.
The answer to problems like these are pretty simple: remove the roleplay/flavor prerequisites from these classes, just like happened to the base classes. Seriously. You can work the concept one way (like D&D) or the other way (like the base classes in Saga), but mixing the two just breeds stupidity.
Chapter 13 - Galactic Gazetteer
It talks about planets in the universe. It's cool, I guess, but this review is about the system itself.
Chapter 14 - Gamemastering
This chapter talks about skills you should have if you're the DM. Most DMs ought to reread this chapter, in my experience.
Problematically, they kept the same retarded experience award rules from Dungeons & Dragons. You know, the rules that reward you for encounters defeated instead of adventures completed. This means that if the players are on a quest to rescue someone from a base filled with stormtroopers, expect them to go around killing all the stormtroopers before actually performing the rescue. This style of experience-giving awards characters who get into a lot of fights, no matter if they are actually doing what they are supposed to (rescuing the captive) or not. And that is retarded.
Chapter 15 - Eras of Play
More of chapter 13, basically. Yawn.
Chapter 16 - Allies and Opponents
The monster chapter. "Monsters" in this case include nonheroics like stormtroopers and random rebel troopers. Nothing special to see here.
And that's it. I was pretty harsh in this review about aspects I found retarded, enough so that you might think I really hated this book. However, I am overly critical. This represents a massive leap forward in star wars roleplaying systems and is really well-playable. As I mentioned, the feats are generally weak but that's okay because they are universally weak and balanced with each other. Jedi and droids are clearly overpowering, but it's not as bad as it was in Star Wars d20 and not nearly as bad as it was in Star Wars d6.
From what I've seen so far, I'd give it an 8/10.
It's hard to really understand how different Saga Edition is, and why this is a good thing, without understanding the terrible history of officially licensed Star Wars roleplaying games. So here is a brief history lesson:
* Star Wars d6, first edition: published by West End Games in 1987. This game was both broken and severely retarded.
* Star Wars d6, second edition: published by West End Games in 1992. This game was far less retarded than the original, but still both broken and somewhat retarded. It was actually a good gaming system if you and your players accepted the fact that jedi were simply better than everybody else, houseruled away the retarded dark side points rule, and gave all your players free character points to spend on knowledge skills (and only knowledge skills).
* Star Wars d20: published by Wizards of the Coast in 2000. This game was pretty much a huge step backwards from d6 second edition in every possible way, and was both severely broken and severely retarded. It's not the worst roleplaying book ever published by Wizards (that would be Weapons of Legacy) or even the worst Star Wars supplement (that would be Power of the Jedi), but it was really bad. This book was written by J.D. Wiker, one of the worst professional game designers ever. This guy has the inverse Midas touch: everything he works on becomes shit. Seriously, it would be pretty amazing if it wasn't so pathetic.
* Star Wars Saga Edition: published by Wizards of the Coast in 2007. This is like a massive breath of fresh air. Reasonably balanced compared to past editions, no retarded dark side rules...it's got some hideous warts, but comparing it to Star Wars d20 is like comparing a thoroughbred stallion to your grandmother's starving, dying mule.
Okay, with that out of the way, let's get on to the actual book review.
First of all, my biggest complaint: the artwork. Instead of commissioning new artwork that didn't suck, they recycled all the retardedly bad art from Star Wars d20. This makes reading the book an exercise in masochism at times.
Introduction
Starting things off we have what we normally have to start. Nothing special to see here that we haven't seen in Dungeons & Dragons: it basically tells you how pen and paper games with dice work.
Character creation is fairly similar to what you're familiar with in Dungeons & Dragons, with the same abilities and everything, but significantly simpler because there's no ability bloat and all named bonuses are the same type.
Statistics are interesting. Hit points are as you suspect, but saves and AC have been rolled into three different "defense" statistics: fortitude, reflex, and will (what a shocker). Something immediately apparent when looking at the saves, and an excellent theme in this book, is that your character level (they call it "heroic level") has as much to do with your statistics as your other abilities.
That's important, and I'm going to say it again. Your level has as much to do with your statistics as your other abilities. Saga Edition operates on the (correct) conceit that the heroes should be reasonably good at everything. To that end, they have you adding your level or half your level to just about every check you could possibly make. This represents Star Wars reasonably well and is a great breath of fresh air from the Dungeons & Dragons conceit that you are supposed to be totally awesome within your niche and suck amazingly everywhere else (which is only partially true or not true at all for casters, but that's another story).
We've also got, instead of just HP, a "damage threshold" and a condition track that taking damage that exceeds your threshold moves you down. Moving down the condition track gives you a number of sucky penalties and debuffs, and is a pretty good idea for a game that attempts to model Star Wars.
Chapter 1: Abilities
This is identical to how it works in Dungeons & Dragons and isn't really worth covering here.
Chapter 2: Species
You can be a human and get the normal D&D human benefits (bonus skill point at each level, bonus feat to start), or a non-human and get some stat modifiers and other abilities. If that sounds familiar, that's because it is: it works the same way in Dungeons & Dragons. Only here instead of skill points we have "trained skills" which is basically the same as maxing the same skills at every level.
Notable races include Humans (who are always awesome), Cereans (+2 overall to stats, but they're all mental and -2 physical; also they get to REROLL ANY INITIATIVE IF THEY FEEL LIKE IT), Duros (for sucking), Kel Dor (they get to REROLL ANY USE THE FORCE CHECK I THEY FEEL LIKE IT which also can apply to initiative), and...man, I'm bored, I'm just going to skip ahead to the next chapter.
Chapter 3 - Classes
Lots of uninspiring artwork, and five classes to pick from. Before I head in on the classes, I just want to make note on their design philosophy: they are not supposed to represent a character's profession or in-universe existance at all. The designers have intended them to be entirely metagame collections of abilities. I find that an admirable goal and one that I've been pushing for in game design for ages.
The problem is...that's not the way it is. Because they also included prestige classes! Those are shorter classes that are also supposed to be collections of abilities but, hey, they've got roleplaying restrictions and other prerequisites! Gotcha! This causes some retarded metagame problems that manifest themselves in strange ways in-game that will be discussed later when I get to prestige classes.
When you take your first level in a class, you get a bonus to your defenses depending on the class. To make multiclassing not as awesome, these bonuses don't stack, you only add your best class bonus at any time. Every even level in a class, you get a bonus feat. Every odd level, you get a "talent" that you can pick from the class's list of talents.
Okay, now for the classes:
* Jedi. Who couldn't see this one coming? They get a +1 to all their defenses. Huge hit points (best of any class, equivalent to the soldier). Full BAB. You only get 2 + int trained skills though, one of which is obviously going to be Use the Force. You get a decent number of starting feats (3), two of which are pretty useful (Force Sensitivity and Lightsaber proficiency), one of which is not (Simple Weapon proficiency). Your useful talents center around being awesome with your lightsaber (block blaster bolts, parry melee attacks with Use the Force checks) and making the fact that you only get 2 + int trained skills not suck by turning absolutely everything into a Use the Force check. There's also a talent that moves people down the condition track when you talk to them. I'm not kidding; as a jedi, you can seriously make someone wounded just by dissing them really badly (can't knock them out, though). You don't get any force powers by default; you have to blow your bonus feats on them.
* Noble. OH GOD THE HORRIBLE ARTWORK AGAIN. As far as I can tell this class only exists for you to twink yourself out if you're playing a droid by using the Wealth talent (more on that below) or accomplish a crappy version of the D&D fear spells, which would be extremely awesome if it didn't only work on people your level or lower. Oh, and they have 3/4ths BAB and 6 + int trained skills. This class is basically one level long, three if you want the fear talents, or four if you want the fear talents and a bonus feat before leaving. Anything beyond that is stupid, but it's an unbeatable one-level dip.
* Scoundrel. Ah, the Han Solo class. The scoundrel is...not terribly exciting. 3/4ths BAB, 4 + int trained skills, pistol proficiency and Point Blank Shot as starting feats. You've got some neat talents; Dastardly Strike is awesome, and you get Sneak Attack which is sort of gimpy due to the lack of multiple attacks in this game but still okay, but that's about it. The class is otherwise unimpressive.
* Scout. You get proficiency in both pistols and rifles to start (woohoo!). 3/4ths BAB (lame). You get some check rerolling talents (Initiative and Perception, Stealth), Uncanny dodge (two talents), Evasion...it's not a bad class, really.
* Soldier. You're the only class with Armor Proficiency to start (both light and medium), and you get all the Weapon Proficiencies aside from lightsabers. Definitely a solid first level. 3 + int modifier trained skills. Your talents include making armor not suck to the point where you'd actually want to wear armor, Unbalance Opponent (great for melee combat), great abilities that you can't actually use because your class doesn't have that skill (Draw Fire), and Devastating Attack (not bad, really). A good one-level dip before entering jedi, three if you want both armor talents.
Multiclassing notes:
* You only take one starting feat from the new class's list when you add a new class. So basically, take Soldier as your first class.
Aside from that, all this should be familiar if you've played Dungeons & Dragons.
Chapter 4 - Skills
Here's where things depart from the familiar embrace of Dungeons & Dragons. Here's what a skill check is:
1d20 + half your level + key ability mod + random other mods
That's right. No skill ranks to speak of. If you're trained, add +5. That's it.
Skills are basically D&D stuff with some of the stupid removed, folded together, or renamed. Initiative is now a skill which you roll at the start of combat to determine action order, instead of just a flat number. Use the Force is also a skill and used in a number of places if you're a jedi. Some skills (like Climb) are still retarded because even though flight doesn't exist in this game, jetpacks do.
Chapter 5 - Feats
Most of these suffer from the same problem that feats in Dungeons & Dragons do (that is, they suck). However, in Saga, feats are the only way to get iterative attacks. Which means in practice that everyone ends up taking Double Attack and Triple Attack, and all jedi end up taking at least Dual Weapon Mastery I and II. Vehicular Combat is required by anyone who wants to be a pilot. Beyond that there are some gems, but most is crap that will be forgotten about as soon as more splatbooks come out.
That's really okay, though. Melee fighters don't depend on their feats to be competitive because casters don't exist in Star Wars, so the fact that most feats aren't all that good or isn't a problem at all.
Chapter 6 - The Force
Blah blah force points blah blah force powers. Basically, everyone's got a bunch of force points that they get whenever they level up. They work like action points, and sometimes jedi can trade them in to boost some power. Action points aren't really my favorite mechanic, so I'm pretty ambivalent to this part of Saga.
Wait? What's this? Retarded dark side rules alert! Dark side points are back. If you commit an "evil act", you get a dark side point. If your number of dark side points equals your wisdom score, you "become a GM character". That's right. By the Rules As Written, you cannot play an evil game. Obviously everyone is going to ignore this if they're playing an evil game, but that rule has no business being in the book in the first place.
Dark side points are retarded. They were retarded when West End Games first introduced them as a game mechanic, and they remain retarded twenty years later. They are a mechanic that does nothing but foster a player-versus-DM attitude, something that tabletop games are not supposed to have. The DM ought to have enough trust in the players to let the players roleplay their characters by themselves. If the player wants to roleplay his slow descent into the dark side, that's fine and can make for some totally cool stories (and has). Instead you have the DM slapping you with a dark side point every time you perform an "evil action". And some of those "evil actions" are so arguable and stupid that they resemble the 3rd edition Player's Handbook definitions of Law and Chaos.
Enough about the retardedness of dark side points, though. Let's get on to the force powers!
It works like this: you take a feat, and get some number of powers based on your wisdom score. These powers don't form a pool, though. This mechanic is a bit stupid in that you pick a power, and the number of times you pick that power is equal to the number of times you can use it in a combat. Why do you have to use a mind trick if you've already blown your force lightning? I have no idea, it's kind of retarded. And it doesn't seem like a major balance concern to me to just let your number of power usages form a pool and let you cast your powers spontaneously. Err, "use". Right. This is the force, not magic. Hard to distinguish between them sometimes.
A review of the powers:
* Battle Strike: A decent power, but not altogether that useful with the way the casting/recovery mechanic works. You can basically do it once per combat unless you spend a lot of feats or only pick this power.
* Dark Rage: This is pretty sweet, but see Battle Strike (unless you're willing to spend a force point).
* Farseeing: It's scrying, if you spend a force point.
* Force Disarm: Pretty good if you don't have Improved Disarm, meh otherwise. The problem is mostly that it (along with Improved Sunder) make lightsaber fights both boring and stupid. Basically, everyone has to carry around a bag full of lightsabers because otherwise the fight ends when one opponent sunders the other's weapon. That's really retarded and not part of any Star Wars movie I've ever seen. I suggest making lightsabers immune to this power (and Improved Sunder) for that reason.
* Force Grip: This power is awesome as long as you don't use it in combat.
* Force Lightning: This power is great. Decent damage, but the real kicker is that it takes the target one point down the condition track. Two points if you blow a force point.
* Force Slam: This is pretty respectable. Basically, it's an area attack that knocks prone everyone in a cone. No other class has this sort of pseudo battlefield control ability.
* Force Stun: It's Force Lightning without the damage and hits Will defense instead, but every five points your check beats their defense, it's another point down the condition track. Definitely awesome, and also unencumbered by that dark side tag. How many other effects actually target will defense? Not many.
* Force Thrust: It's a bull rush that uses your Use the Force check instead. Meh.
* Mind Trick: I think we all know how this one works.
* Move Object: It's a lot less broken than Dungeons & Dragon's Telekinesis, that's for sure.
* Negate Energy: Pointless. You don't need to spend a feat to be able to do this with your lightsaber.
* Rebuke: Like spell turning, but for the force. A pretty great way to defend against an enemy Force Stunning you.
* Sever Force: Oh, here we go. The single most retarded thing printed in Star Wars d20 makes a comeback. It somehow wasn't enough for the authors to just let it die and everyone to pretend it never existed, they had to resurrect it and reprint it. At least here it's not totally, stupidly broken, but it's still retarded.
* Surge: Useless. Just wear a jetpack.
* Vital Transfer: Well, I guess if your party doesn't have a cleric, it's okay. Oh, wait, this is Star Wars, clerics don't exist here. How useful this is depends entirely on the DM.
Next up is Force Talents. You can pick these whenever you gain a talent if you have the Force Sensitive feat. Most of these involve substituting your Use the Force check for other skill checks like Pilot or Perception, or wasting your force points in some fashion. The dark side ones aren't horrible though (+1 to all defenses for you and your allies until the end of combat for an action; use a power as a swift action instead of a standard action), and you can pick up the Star Wars equivalent of Shape Spell for your Force Slam power too.
Next up is Force Techniques. These are basically class features of some prestige classes in a later chapter, and have various small effects (though one of them lets you get a force point back that you spend in an encounter for free -- that's pretty nice).
Finally there are Force Secrets. They are basically metamagic feats for your force powers, and you need to spend a force point to use them. Quicken Spell, err, Power, sadly makes an appearance here.
The rest of the chapter is a bunch of flavor text about various force-using traditions.
Chapter 7 - Heroic Traits
Again with the shitty art. This chapter is basically about roleplaying, and has some random tables to roll on for stuff like your weight and height if you're too much of a lazy asshole to come up with your own character.
Chapter 8 - Equipment
There's some comprehensible but super-situational rules about legality of weapons, licenses, etc. Then there's the items. Basically, everything you'd expect to find. Of particular annoyance to me was how "Blaster Carbine" and "Blaster Rifle" were both listed, and the only difference was that the blaster rifle was strictly better. There's everything you'd expect to find in Star Wars plus grenades, and it's all very generic. I'm sure that in the future there's going to be a supplement with fine-grained differences between specific weapon models for people who like that sort of thing.
There's also lodging and lifestyle, but unlike in Shadowrun, it doesn't seem that important. Really depends on the DM.
Chapter 9 - Combat
Remember Dungeons & Dragons? This works the same way, except that grappling is a lot simpler. Also now we have that condition track and damage threshold (which is equal to your fortitude defense + your size modifier, if any). That's pretty scary at low levels and not so much at high levels when your fortitude defense goes up faster than damage does. By taking three swift actions, you can move back up the condition track.
Anyway, it's D&D combat, but since everyone is a lot less powerful in Star Wars and there are no mages, it runs a lot differently and tends to last longer.
Chapter 10 - Vehicles
The rules here for vehicle combat are a lot better than anything seen in Star Wars d20. 2-D vs. 3-D isn't mentioned at all, a massive improvement from the Star Wars d20 system which had space combat taking place in 2-D. The only problem I can see right now is that missiles are still retardedly good, with pretty much no reason for people to use them over lasers. Obviously, that's not Star Wars.
Chapter 11 - Droids
This is the chapter that's all about playing drouds, and here's where things get abusive. Remember the one-level dip I mentioned in the Noble class earlier for the wealth talent? Here's where you can abuse it.
Droids don't have constitution modifiers (a completely retarded rule left over from D&D's construct type) and you can choose your "degree" which is basically your stat modifiers. Physical stats are considered better than mental stats here, and any physical stat boost is hit with a corresponding double mental stat drop. You can choose to be medium or small.
More things of note for building droid PCs:
* You get a heuristic processor and two arms by default.
* You take one level of any of the non-jedi classes (that means you take your first level in noble)
* You can spend up to 1k credits on yourself to start.
* You can buy more movement modes. The best choice is obviously flying, which is basically superman-like flight (those of you who are veteran D&D players know how this works).
* Get yourself telescoping hands (or other appendages) and be Inspector Gadget!
* Go nuts getting yourself all sorts of crazy crap that the players can't get. Darkvision, armor made out of arbitrarium, a shield generator (up to SR 15 for a medium droid), whatever weapons you desire, etc.
* Then, if you ever get tired of your Wealth talent, you can reprogram it into something more combat-related. Reprogramming can really get quite ridiculous.
The only downside to playing a droid is your lack of a constitution score and inability to take levels in jedi. That's it. If you aren't playing a jedi, there's really no reason not to play a droid.
Chapter 12 - Prestige Classes
Here's where things get retarded. Prestige classes work like this: once you get tired of the all the crap talents from the five core classes, you take prestige classes instead. Only now, instead of being generic, they actually have flavor and some even have roleplaying prerequisites to get in.
Needless to say, that's retarded and is the cause of some serious in-game stupidity. Here's one example:
The Jedi Knight prestige class gets a talent that lets them add their dexterity bonus to damage in place of their strength bonus. Sounds pretty cool, right? After all, lightsaber duelists in the movies pull all sorts of crazy crap in terms of maneuvers and generally look like dex-based fighters instead of str-based fighters.
Well, there's just one small problem: the Jedi Knight prestige class requires you to be a jedi to get in, and the corresponding Sith Apprentice class doesn't have a similar ability. What does that end up meaning in-universe? It means that all dex-based lightsaber combatants are either jedi or fallen jedi. No dex-based lightsaber fighter would ever be a straight sith, because they would be simply inferior due to lack of that talent. Needless to say, that's retarded and completely goes against the spirit of the movies.
It gets even worse than that. Even a jedi can't pick up that talent until they hit level 8. That means that for the first 7 levels of their life the dex-based jedi is going to be depending on a blaster for doing damage offensively over their lightsaber due to the blaster's superior damage dice. While I'm sure that a jedi who is worldly enough to use blasters would make for a really interesting character, the in-universe implications of this are retarded. I don't remember Obi-Wan Kenobi relying on his blaster up until he hit level 8, then suddenly switching over to his lightsaber.
There's also the problem that the Jedi Master PrC gets straight-up better abilities than the Sith Lord PrC.
The answer to problems like these are pretty simple: remove the roleplay/flavor prerequisites from these classes, just like happened to the base classes. Seriously. You can work the concept one way (like D&D) or the other way (like the base classes in Saga), but mixing the two just breeds stupidity.
Chapter 13 - Galactic Gazetteer
It talks about planets in the universe. It's cool, I guess, but this review is about the system itself.
Chapter 14 - Gamemastering
This chapter talks about skills you should have if you're the DM. Most DMs ought to reread this chapter, in my experience.
Problematically, they kept the same retarded experience award rules from Dungeons & Dragons. You know, the rules that reward you for encounters defeated instead of adventures completed. This means that if the players are on a quest to rescue someone from a base filled with stormtroopers, expect them to go around killing all the stormtroopers before actually performing the rescue. This style of experience-giving awards characters who get into a lot of fights, no matter if they are actually doing what they are supposed to (rescuing the captive) or not. And that is retarded.
Chapter 15 - Eras of Play
More of chapter 13, basically. Yawn.
Chapter 16 - Allies and Opponents
The monster chapter. "Monsters" in this case include nonheroics like stormtroopers and random rebel troopers. Nothing special to see here.
And that's it. I was pretty harsh in this review about aspects I found retarded, enough so that you might think I really hated this book. However, I am overly critical. This represents a massive leap forward in star wars roleplaying systems and is really well-playable. As I mentioned, the feats are generally weak but that's okay because they are universally weak and balanced with each other. Jedi and droids are clearly overpowering, but it's not as bad as it was in Star Wars d20 and not nearly as bad as it was in Star Wars d6.
From what I've seen so far, I'd give it an 8/10.
