TheSagaContinues

I did a few new powers and a bunch of Force Techniques and Force talents back in the day.  Not sure if any of my house rule files are still on the web.  I was working on some updates when I generally lost interest in Saga Edition in favor of EotE.

I'll second Sienn's comment about balance being a big issue.  How well I did with my homebrew stuff is a matter of debate; some folks thought it was too powerful, others thought it was too weak, and I'm sure there were plenty of opinions in between.

From the sounds of it, Chopper will be a nice contrast to R2-D2.  Be interesting if they give this particular astromech a vocabulator, or if they go the Chewbacca route and use the other characters' dialogue to relay Chopper's moods and thoughts.

As far as Luke goes, by RotJ he's a very advanced PC with several hundred XP under his belt, so he's probably purchased a few ranks of the Toughened talent, to say nothing of the defensive upgrades for the Sense power, plus who knows whatever other defensive talents he's picked up along the way.

Most PCs starting out in this system are going to be a lot more fragile.  In SWSE terms, it'd be akin to a Level 1 Human Jedi trying Luke's stunt in RotJ, even assuming the goons were all CL 1 Non-Heroics.  Said PC is going to get creamed in pretty short order, as they lack the high Reflex Defense and other defensive traits that Luke's CL 11 build in the back of the Saga Edition book had.

Another reason the Marvel strategy works for Marvel films is the ready-made catalogue of well known characters. Star Wars doesn't have that, especially when you consider that EU fans are a minority of Star Wars fans.

Besides Han Solo, it's hard to think of a SW character who could really carry his own movie. As cool as Yoda is, he's a supporting character through and through. No one wants to sit through a constant stream of Yoda-speak for two hours. And while I personally would love to see Emma Watson as Kerra Holt, how many SW fans have any idea who she is or what makes Knight Errant unique?

It's really hard to see how they can apply the Marvel strategy successfully to Star Wars.

That's a good point.

Most Star Wars fans are really only aware of the movies, and outside of Han Solo, Boba Fett, and maybe Ewan McGregor's Obi-Wan, there's not a whole lot of characters to draw from without delving into the obscure.

Then again, the MCU is starting to do the same, with a Guardians of the Galaxy film in the works, as well as Ant Man and possibly Doctor Strange.  Of course part of the problem is that two of their biggest franchises (Spider-Man and X-Men) have the movie rights sitting in the hands of other studios (Sony and Fox respectively), though from what I understand Fantastic Four is now back with Marvel, so there's a possible option.  So for the MCU, they don't really have a choice but to start delving into the B and C-list heroes to see what could work.

Interesting that Disney is going the "Marvel approach" to the Star Wars franchise.  While it's worked for Marvel, I think a large part of that has been because the Marvel Cinematic Universe films have generally been pretty damn good films on their own merit, particularly the Iron Man ones, with the most common complaint about Iron Man 2 simply being that it wasn't as good as the first one, and the first Iron Man is probably one of the best superhero movies ever made, with RDjr ranking right up there with Christopher Reeve in how amazing a job he did bringing the character to life on the silver screen.

So I was watching some of Hidalgo's comicon presentation via the youtube, and he said Rebels episodes will be in chronological order, and will follow the main characters. If true, at least they've learned some lessons from Clone Wars. No four episode D-squad stories, or jumping back and forth on the timeline for no freakin' reason.

Well, part of the problem with Clone Wars was they only had a three year window in which to tell their stories, and if they focused entirely on Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Ahsoka, it'd start to look like they were the only Jedi that were actively doing much to fight the Separatists.  So the "jumping around the timeline" and "D-squad stories" where necessary to pad the series out, particularly as prior to the Disney purchase it looked like they were going to keep producing episodes of the series as long as folks were watching.

At least with Rebels, it seems that it will be an original cast of characters, and they're not quite as constrained in time frame as Clone Wars was.

That sounds pretty awesome. How did she take out multiple Stormtroopers with one action? In Saga, you would need a lot of multi-attack feats like Double Attack, Triple Attack, Cleave, Follow Through, Great Cleave, etc....
 
Lightsabers are supposed to be devastating. But aren't Stormtroopers supposed to be lame cannon fodder?

Well, the Lightsaber in FFG's system does a flat 10 damage + number of uncancelled successes on the attack roll (no bonus for strength or dexterity, but when a vibro-axe's damage is 3 plus strength bonus + uncancelled successes, the lightaber doesn't need the extra help), but it also has Breach 1, which enables it to ignore up to 10 points of Soak Value (what characters use to reduce damage taken, much like DR).  A Stormtrooper has a Soak Value of 5 (or DR 5 if you prefer) and 5 "hit points"*.  And minion groups operate similar to squads, in that a group of minions is considered a single entity, which each minion after the first providing a free upgrade to dice pools using skills relevant for that group; stormtroopers have Ranged (Heavy) as one of their minion group skills, so a minion group of five stormroopers would get four upgrades when shooting with a blaster rifle.  And unlike Saga Edition squads, minion groups in FFG's system can easily be scaled up or down as the GM feels is appropriate to the encounter.  And each time the PC deals more damage than the base Wound Threshold of the minion type, the minion group is reduced by one.  So for a stormtrooper minion group, if you deal at least six points of damage past the minion's Soak Value (which is only applied once per hit, no matter the size of the minion group), then you drop a stormtrooper, which means that's one less upgrade to their skill checks when it's their turn to do something.

The other thing with minions is that a critical hit automatically takes them down so long as one point of damage gets past their Soak Value; you could drop a stormtrooper with a hold-out blaster if you manage to score a critical hit against them.  And it bears noting that lightsabers are ridiculously easy to trigger a critical hit with.

So, for the Jedi lady, she rolled a few successes (I don't recall the exact number, but less than 5).  Since the lightsaber's Breach 1 lets it blow right through the stormtrooper minion group's Soak Value, she deal enough damage to exceed a stormtrooper's base Wound Threshold twice, dropping two of them outright.  She was also able to trigger a critical hit, instantly dropping a third stormtrooper.  If she'd only rolled a couple more successes, she would have taken down the 4th stormtrooper as well.

Given she was about on par with a 3rd level Saga Edition Jedi in terms of her lightsaber combat prowess, that was pretty impressive, and didn't need to spend any character resources (aside from having two skill ranks in the Lightsaber skill).

*one thing to keep in mind is that Wound Thresholds are much, much lower than Saga Edition hit point totals.  A starting PC will be lucky to break 20, and even that's only if playing a Wookiee; most everyone else will be hovering around 12 to 15 for their starting Wound Threshold.

I know that you've rolled out your own Jedi house rules and that others have as well.  What's your play experience been like?
One thing that really sold me on Saga was that it felt like Star Wars.  Playing a Jedi felt like it was "supposed to", min/maxing to an extreme aside, I really enjoyed playing a Jedi character that didn't feel clunky or incomplete (like it did for me with RCR) and I didn't feel like I was the group super star (at least with the way I built and played it).

As far as campaign play goes, a Force-user in this system is a lot less powerful than they were in any of the d20 games by a long stretch. If you've played the D6 system, it's fairly close to that, except that Force Powers are far more narrow and focused rather than being the "catch all" categories that WEG's Force skills were.

The "fledgling Jedi" I was playing would, in Saga Edition terms, be woefully underpowered, to the point that he'd only have Use the Force as a trained skill (no Skill Focus) and no Force Training feats, as the most he can do is sense emotions from someone he's standing right next to, make himself harder to hit (something akin to Spider-Man's "spider sense"), and lift fairly small objects a short distance (up to several yards at absolute most).  He's quite perceptive and quick to react to sudden danger, but those are fairly subtle things, maybe akin to being able to re-roll Perception and Initiative checks if put into Saga Edition terms.  Even in D6 terms he'd be a wimp in regards to Force prowess, though he'd have a couple more tricks up his sleeves due to how Force Powers in D6 worked.