Star Wars Saga Edition Enemies

Hi to all you helpful people out there. In terms of combat, XP is awarded by the encounter, not individual opponents. You kind of average the CL of the encounter.

• Saga Edition Feats

An environmental hazard affects both the heroes and their enemies, giving both groups. As with any Star Wars game supplement, you need the Saga Edition.

• Enemy Tactics CW. Star Wars Saga Edition – Talent Tree Lists & descriptions SoG: Starships of the Galaxy ToG: Threats of the Galaxy KotOR: Knights of the Old Republic Campaign Guide.
• Challenge Levels: Just add to the base rules of the Star Wars Saga Edition game, add +200 XP to every Challenge Starting credits for a character above 21st level: your wealth at any given level should be the following: (level x level -1) x 2,000 credits. Double this for a noble with the Wealth talent.

Add the CL and divide it by three and round it down.So, ten CL 1 stormies would be a CL 3 and have a XP level of 600. But that's for everyone in the group as thye get a portion of the XP depending on how they went, which is why for bigger groups the CL of the encounter needs to be higher so there's more of a share.The GM's chapter goes into this.link=so does this, a bit./link. Hi everyone,I have been reading thouroughly through the GM section on experience awards. Once again I cannot see anywhere in it that it says you divide the total challenge level by 3 to get the challenge level for awarding xp. Then I decided to go through any errata that has been published and rule clarifications. Once again I found nothing.

So is this dividing by 3 actually correct or is it a GM house rule that you have made? Sorry for not taking you at your word but I think it would be easier to propose this change to my players if it was clarified or noted somewhere.Thanks again.AlphaD.

I bought the Saga Edition core books and several of the supplements back in 2009-2011 but I never had a chance to play their version of the Star Wars RPG due to being in graduate school at the time and not being able to find people that were interested in role playing games. Unfortunately, those books have never hit the table and they still to this day sit on my bookshelves. Then in 2013 FFG's Star Wars game hit the stores and people in my area became enthralled with the mechanics and adventures. There is a sold FFG Star Wars group that meets twice a month to play.So, my questions is: Besides the dice systems, how is Saga Edition and FFG's version of Star Wars different in terms of capturing the feeling of the universe, the narrative, and/or any thing that either system did better on when comparing the two systems, whether that be using the Force in the game, balancing Force users with non-Force users combat, space combat, etc? After all these years, I am just curious what people think of Star Wars now with FFG compared to what Wizards did with Star Wars in Saga Edition.Thanks for sharing your thoughts!Edited December 23, 2018 by TyberiusDeangelo. I'll talk space and vehicle combat.Sagas take is pretty traditional.

You put little spaceships on a gridded table and move them around. It's easy to grasp for the most part, but getting a big fight going can take up entire sessions of play.FFG went with a more abstract, movie director perspective, and really seems to use the Battle of Yavin as it's template. No need for grids, and it actually works like a really nasty melee fight.

When everyone grasps how that works, and you drop in the right optional rules it's not bad, and can even be pretty good. But getting an entire group that grasps it. FFG even rewrote the rules a few times for beginner games and Genesys because there were parts that are just plain hard to wrap your head around. Also Due to the high damage rating of starship weapons, and low hull and Defensive options, it's pretty brutal (again, see the Battle of Yavin, one or two hits and you're out). This can be quite a surprise to people launching headlong into a Squadron of TIEs only to find they just charged into a nest of actually decently designed Japanese Zeroes.Personally, I like the FFG take of all the systems. It's pretty well done, feels like star wars, is fairly balanced except for a few specific builds. But it's got some things that turn people off.

Vehicle combat is weird, and takes getting used to both in play and encounter design, especially compared to other systems, making a good force user requires some intent and discipline by the player, and understanding by the gm, and the fact that game WANTS both the GM and players to contribute details to the story is a little jarring.If you like writing your adventures like a kind of loose, improv heavy movie script this is probably the system for you. If you like nice neat little maps and grids, and challenge ratings, and don't mind having to replace Stormtroopers at a certain point because they become a total non-threat. Sagas is probably more your style. Narrative Opportunities with Some Structure vs. Nearly All Structure.Easy Peasy GMing vs.

Need a Day to PrepareReese's Peanut Butter Cup vs. Candy CornLike Jaethe I've played all versions of Star Wars starting with WEG.

WEG vs d20 vs FFG are all very different gaming systems so they are hard to compare. For me personally I will always play Star Wars with FFG from now until my interment. That's hard to say. I used to once love the detailed mechanics of systems such as d20 and would not have tried anything with a narrative label. After decades of gaming, I've done a 360.I greatly appreciate the easiness of prep for a session of FFG without having to dump details. I love how the dice actually encourage players to get involved with telling the story.

Players that are all about the mechanics and not true role-players at all will surprisingly get into it. For combat, the greatest difference for me is losing the 'Roll - Did I hit? - Your Turn - Your Turn - Your Turn - Roll - Did I hit?' For something where all the players get to be engaged.You've got to try FFG's narrative system to actually understand the difference in my opinion.

Before I played the FFG Warhammer version I really had no idea what this new system was about even though I had read and researched for weeks before playing. Just one brief session made me love and understand it.Edited December 24, 2018 by Sturn. So, my questions is: Besides the dice systems, how is Saga Edition and FFG's version of Star Wars different in terms of capturing the feeling of the universe, the narrative, and/or any thing that either system did better on when comparing the two systems, whether that be using the Force in the game, balancing Force users with non-Force users combat, space combat, etc? After all these years, I am just curious what people think of Star Wars now with FFG compared to what Wizards did with Star Wars in Saga Edition.FFG did well to create three types of Core Rule Books. If you want an Ep. IV feel, then go with Edge.

Want Force users everywhere? Play in the Old Republic where (seemingly) everyone throws force powers around? Then go with Force and Destiny.

Want to do battle-scale events like a war game? Then do Age of Rebellion. I like that they make different little books (Clone Wars, Rebels, etc.) for different eras.

With SAGA d20, it's one basic book with everything in it and you have to invent these eras. That said, the FFG books are awful at telling you how things work.

One book says this item gets a boost to medicine checks, another book with the same item says nothing about that. And skill entries don't tell you all that can be done with a skill. You find some errant thread in the combat section and just don't have a place to turn to to know what a skill can do. Just awful.SAGA more went with miniatures, grids, maps, hexes, and such. FFG is all abstract.

Don't sweat the small stuff, whether you are 6 hexes away or 7 and having that determine if you hit or not. What a relief!!I dislike the force system entirely. I'd rather they had a different system for Old Republic days and then something different for Edge. One makes force powers hard to come by, the other makes it free-flowing. The complicated and arduous system has kept my group from even wanting to play force-users. If there's an area SAGA did well in, then in may have been the simplicity of the force system. One Skill and powers list D&D spell lists.

In FFG, ONE power has about 12 potential upgrades each. Get 3-4 force powers and you'll have 36-48 options to keep track of whether you bought that upgrade or not.As far as background goes, I find that FFG throws out 440-page books when 200 pages would do. It tells you (repeatedly) about mundane stuff like about how Hutt worlds are full of dangerous gangsters.

I find the older WEG modules to be more informative and concise. Regarding Force users, Saga Edition, and SWFFG.Thing to bear in mind is that the two games took two very different approaches to replicating Jedi.As per Steve Horvath in the old EotE introductory video, FFG's intent was to replicate the perceived 'slow path' of development that Luke engaged in over the course of the original trilogy, due largely to a lack of formal instruction for most of the four year span those movies occur over. So the Force power trees and progressin in how capable a Force user your character is quite slow.With WotC on the other hand, they were angling more to replicate the prequel era Jedi and allow players to have characters like that, so learning/mastering Force powers became a whole lot easier.

Sadly, the way that Saga Edition handled skill checks when affecting non-heroic adversaries was problematic, with Skill Focus being vastly more powerful than intended; it just so happened that Force users brought the issue into clear and inescapable view. In  short, the largest problem in Saga was the massive im balance between Force characters and everyone else.        At first level a character could do cool and powerful things no one else could and by 3rd level, they could do it really well by tak ing skill focus in the Force power skill.By 4th or 5th level they had even more force abilities and easily dominated the action with coolness and power. While everyone el se 'just' attacked, maybe did something cool as a no b le and helped someone move or, eventually iirc, gav e a standard action at the cost of their own. So it's realistic? I kinda want to buy Saga now.

My main issue with Saga, much as I loved it, was that it quickly became clear that if there wasn't a specific Feat or Talent that let you do something, and it wasn't a thing you could normally do by the core rules, you could not do that thing.Like, there's a feat that lets you smack someone in melee combat with your gun. Okay, that's cool. Except that only those who have that feat can smack someone with their gun in melee, no one else can. Not even 'they can do it, but badly,' no, they can't do it at all.

If there's a talent that lets you throw sand in someone's eyes, only someone with that talent (and thus, of specific classes that have access to the talent tree that talent appears in) can ever throw sand in someone's eyes. And they can do this whenever and wherever they want.

The deserts of Tatooine, the plains of Naboo, the meticulously polished corridors of a Star Destroyer, the vacuum of space.Everything became so delineated through the rules, through additional feats and talents and such that it became increasingly difficult, and in some cases impossible, to build a character that wasn't highly specialized in one specific class (or closely grouped classes and prestige classes). And with the way defenses and attack bonuses scaled, multiclassing could be very, very painful.Another very annoying thing is how multiple attacks work.

Huge penalties, especially if you're not going two-weapons route, significant investment to get rid of those penalties ( especially if you're not going two-weapons.), and requiring you to not move to use them. Made them much, much better in the hands of ranged characters, which is odd since Jedi are typically the multiattacking fools of the Star Wars universe.It's still a good system, fairly easy to understand, fairly quick to play, easy to calibrate enemies to various player groups, how they've built their characters (how powerful/minmaxed they are on average), and so on. But my group played Saga for years, and dropped it like a hot potato once I got the funding to buy into the FFG line, and we're a lot happier with it.

It's a lot more flexible out of the box, and once you get the system, you can tweak some minor things without worrying about breaking it completely. With two-weapons, you can eventually buy down the penalties to almost nothing just by getting the various two-weapon feats. For Double and Triple Attack, you need to invest in talents to buy off those penalties, and you need basically a whole Prestige Class worth of levels spent on just those talents to buy off the penalties completely, meaning you can Triple Attack. And that's about it.

Just bugs me. Especially when (and know saying 'real life' costs me cred in this argument) in real life, using two weapons is far more inefficient and impractical than just getting faster with one weapon. And great, now I'm having House Rule ideas for a game I don't even play anymore, so thanks (grumble grumble harrumph). Like, there's a feat that lets you smack someone in melee combat with your gun. Okay, that's cool.

Except that only those who have that feat can smack someone with their gun in melee, no one else can. Not even 'they can do it, but badly,' no, they can't do it at all.That's a problem with all versions of d20 3/3.5 (maybe later versions? Didn't try) in my opinion and it irked me too. I recall picking up the Modern d20 book that had a talent for automatic fire with firearms. So, I can't flip this weapon's switch to automatic and pull the trigger? The counter-argument when I spoke about it on forums is the talent made you be able to do it well. When asked for the rule how to fire an automatic weapon badly without the talent, crickets or house rules.That being said, there is a little bit of that in FFG's systems also.

Just not nearly as bad. And yes, I've house ruled it when I've found it.Edited December 26, 2018 by Sturn. Like, there's a feat that lets you smack someone in melee combat with your gun.

Okay, that's cool. Except that only those who have that feat can smack someone with their gun in melee, no one else can.

Saga Edition Feats

Not even 'they can do it, but badly,' no, they can't do it at all. If there's a talent that lets you throw sand in someone's eyes, only someone with that talent (and thus, of specific classes that have access to the talent tree that talent appears in) can ever throw sand in someone's eyes. And they can do this whenever and wherever they want. The deserts of Tatooine, the plains of Naboo, the meticulously polished corridors of a Star Destroyer, the vacuum of space.So this happens in FFG's system just as often. Look at Talents like Headbutt, Knockdown, Parry, and Pin for close combat examples of things anybody should be able to attempt, but without the Talent, you're right back in the 'Not even 'they can do it, but badly,' no, they can't do it at all that you talk about with Saga.

FFG did well to create three types of Core Rule Books. If you want an Ep. IV feel, then go with Edge. Want Force users everywhere? Play in the Old Republic where (seemingly) everyone throws force powers around? Then go with Force and Destiny.

Want to do battle-scale events like a war game? Then do Age of Rebellion. I like that they make different little books (Clone Wars, Rebels, etc.) for different eras. With SAGA d20, it's one basic book with everything in it and you have to invent these eras.????Saga had plenty of era-specific books: the Old Republic (KotOR era; this one was in high demand and went quickly out of print), Clone Wars, Force Unleashed (a bit OTT, but definitely covering the earlier years of the Empire), Rebellion Era, and Legacy Era. There were also tidbits about other periods tucked away in various rulebooks (like Mara Jade, Odan-Urr, and Nomi Sunrider in the Jedi Academy sourcebook). All from the old Expanded Universe canon.While FFG's different core rulebooks do indeed have different flavours, FFG so far has not done much in the way of era-specific sourcebooks.

Dawn of Rebellion is one (based on the Rebels animated series which is part of the new canon). Rise of the Separatists is coming next year (2019; supposed to be focused on the early Clone Wars), but we don't know yet how much it covers.On the other hand, I will agree with DurosSpacer on most of the rest of his reply.Edited January 2 by BellonaSpelling. Well, and the thing about FFG's narrative system is you can headbutt, knockdown, parry, and pin to your heart's content. Give an enemy setback dice on their next roll? You headbutted them and knocked them off balance. Giving an ally boost dice on their next attack? You pinned the enemy to give them that clear shot.

Enemy missed their lightsaber attack on you? In a shower of sparks, you batted the glowing plasma aside with your vibroblade, keeping the contact brief enough it's still functional, though you'll probably want to give it a thorough servicing the first chance you get. The Talents just let you do it as an actual combat maneuver. Probably already addressed here, but my main issue with Saga was my issue with D20 in general: the levelling thing is a weird artificial constraint, and the only way to learn a new thing is to get more powerful overall. On the face of it, there numerous Prestige classes that would be interesting to explore, but you can't really explore more than one or two in a campaign.

And even at level 20, almost no PC could approach the abilities of many of the iconic characters.Not to mention I really hated the 'deck of cards' approach to Force powers, so I rewrote that entirely.Much prefer the FFG approach. While the mythical 'encounter balance' is a bit more elusive, it's still a far more satisfying and memorable experience, and far more easy to deal with an imbalance than D20 systems. Probably already addressed here, but my main issue with Saga was my issue with D20 in general: the levelling thing is a weird artificial constraint, and the only way to learn a new thing is to get more powerful overall.

On the face of it, there numerous Prestige classes that would be interesting to explore, but you can't really explore more than one or two in a campaign. And even at level 20, almost no PC could approach the abilities of many of the iconic characters.That's an all-around issue with just about any level-based RPG where progression has an eventual cap, even if a single d20 is never rolled as par of the game's mechanics.

I loved Saga Edition but compared to ffg starwars it's a distant second. Ffg just plays better faster, you can wing things, and it's a lot more tolerant of house rules than Saga. If a player likes character optimization it's got enough bells and whistles to scratch that itch. Here are a few tips and tricks.minion groups work best when either they are very large or very small (1 or 2). If your players chew through minions like nothing and combats aren't lasting long enough for your tastes, then you want a lot of minion groups with only 1 or 2 minions per group, that prevents each attack from killing more than 1 or 2 minions, and the dice pools they're attacking your PCs with aren't too deadly.Reintroduce minis, maps, and a grid, but not the grid you're used to.

The large grid cell you're in is all of short range, for 1 maneuver you can move anywhere in it or move to an adjacent cell. I like to print maps in 11 x 17 inch pieces and have each 11 by 17 inch piece of paper be a grid cell/maneuver. The sheet your on (call it sheet 1) is short range. Sheets 2-3, is medium range, sheets 4-5 is long range, sheets 6+ is extreme range. My main issue with Saga, much as I loved it, was that it quickly became clear that if there wasn't a specific Feat or Talent that let you do something, and it wasn't a thing you could normally do by the core rules, you could not do that thing.Like, there's a feat that lets you smack someone in melee combat with your gun. Okay, that's cool.

Except that only those who have that feat can smack someone with their gun in melee, no one else can. Not even 'they can do it, but badly,' no, they can't do it at all.

If there's a talent that lets you throw sand in someone's eyes, only someone with that talent (and thus, of specific classes that have access to the talent tree that talent appears in) can ever throw sand in someone's eyes. And they can do this whenever and wherever they want. The deserts of Tatooine, the plains of Naboo, the meticulously polished corridors of a Star Destroyer, the vacuum of space.Funny you should use gun club as an example as it states that without the soldier talent you can use it as a club but at a penalty.

Typically I have found that it isn't that you can't do things but you either take a penalty or don't get a specific mechanical benefit. You might have to get a little creative such as the sand in your eye being suppress the enemy (I think that is what it was called) under aid another.Anyway I have both systems and have compared them thoroughly and I think they work better for different GMs and players. For instance I like building characters and as a GM the fact that you 'choose what looks good' for enemies is hard for me, but I love how minions work. I also am not good at improvisation so coming up with interesting die results does not come naturally to me. As for characters FFG Star Wars definitely has more systems and ideas in place to make your character interesting, Saga Edition the narrative is mainly up to you. I personally haven't found force users to be as broken as people act on the forums, yes they get cool tricks but they are limited to once per encounter unless they spend a lot of resources on it. Ultimately they are both good just different.

Ok two things: (I know I’m late but.)1. I have not played the other systems, and I should be considered a young table rpg player, BUT, as a Star Wars fan (and Revan fan) I am extremely ticked off with the diehard fans of the ffg system. When I see the undying support for ffg, I see fans who want to play these games to make their own Star Wars stories and make adventures of their own.and it’s annoying me greatly. Why would I want to play a game or combat scenario rolling dice to let me twist the scenario to my favor or make funny things happen based off of dice rolls.

Why play a game for that I can do that for free when I’m making jokes with friends making hypothetical stories.the point of DnD was the dice, hp, and proficiency bonuses to change narrative stories into an actual game of combat and war and adventure. I get the system wasn’t perfect but it’s still fun and is a far better Star Wars experience than what I’m seeing with ffg. WE is different but ffg I don’t like. I need minis, a map, number dice, true combat.i think the other issue bias for me was my first true rpg game was Kotor. I learned about stats and that kind of system from kotor. It is the perfect game if Star Wars and rpg mixed together.thats my 2 cents.2.

Can I buy those saga edition books off of you please if you’ve gone to ffg? I’m trying to setup a game with a bunch of people for Star Wars d20. SAGA was really built around and for Jedi so if all your players are Jedi then it was pretty fun for everyone. It's by far the best d20 version and the resources were great, plus they really tried to give the Players what they wanted in regards to Eras and lore. My biggest issue with the system was the 'Spellification' of the Force, I think along with the better balancing between career options the open feel and versatility of Force Powers in FFGSW is the real improvement.I also played the WEG version(s), both when they came out and again several years ago, and though they were fun they also had the same Jedi = gods kinda feel and past 5-6d in any one Attribute the system kinda broke but that was a problem with the D6 system regardless of genera. It also had the Spellification problem.