SW Saga Edition Thread 2: The Sith Lords

[Krazzman]

Decisions were made:

Human Scout1/Jedi1:
HP:24+1d10+2xCon-mod.
Bab: +1
Skills trained: 5+int-mod.(+ UtF)
Feats:
H Force Sensivity
S Shake it Off, Weapon Prophecies (Simple, Blaster, Rifles)
1 Skill Focus: UtF (Using Human Bonus skill to get Trained in UtF)
J Weapon prophecy (Lightsaber)
Talents:
Evasion, Deflection.

Better defenses: +2 Fort, +3 Ref and +1 Will
Leaving me with: 13+Con, 14+Dex and 12+wis.

In what order should I assign attributes? Did I mess up somewhere?

[Virgil Kane]

Hi Krazzman,

the way I see you may have made a mistake (or two).
Do you want your PC to have Trained UtF at Lvl.1? He startet as a Scout, so Use the Force is no class skill, i.e. he can't train it.
UtF would be accessible by becoming a Jedi. Via multiclassing you take the Lightsabre proficiency as the starting feat. You can take another Talent, but no Bonus Feat. And you will have to take a Feat to take the Skill (UtF) and then the Skill Focus(UtF).
You will get your 2nd feat in Level 3 and there you will get the Bonus Feat of either Scout II or Jedi II. With those two feats you can learn and focus on UtF.

tschö
Virgil

[Sidmen]

When you take Force Sensitivity, Use the Force becomes a class skill. So, he can indeed take it.

[Virgil Kane]

Oh, you're right. Sorry, my bad. In that case, everything's fine. :-)

[Waar]

Decisions were made:

Better defenses: +2 Fort, +3 Ref and +1 Will

Did I mess up somewhere?

Here, the class bonuses to defense scores do not stack, so it should be +1 fort, +2 ref, +1 will

[Krazzman]

The next level shall be Jedi, but I am unsure wether we will get that far as this is only a filler campaign until our two other players have everything sorted out with their newborn.
Tomorrow evening I will probably help the other 2 players build their chars and we will use a new Method for attribute allocation that I wanted to try out.

We will roll six rows of stats with 4d6b3 and then choose a row or line or diagonal as our Stat array then assign these scores. We won't be able to choose the same twice.

For what array should I look? An allround array or a more specialised? In which stats should I specialize?
And what skills should I take if I want to be a rather stealthy Jedi despite Stealth?

[Nerd-o-rama]

Jedi are pretty MAD in this game; you want Str, Dex, and Con to fight in melee (unless you take Weapon Finesse and the Jedi Knight Ataru talent, then you can drop Str), Wisdom for your number of Force Powers, and Charisma for your UtF check.

Basically decide whether you want to be a fighter with a couple spells or a caster with a lightsaber and then prioritize (Str or Dex and Con) or (Cha and Wis), respectively, not skimping too hard on any of those.

As for Stealth, Perception, Initiative, and movement skills never hurt in any system. There's also a Talent under the Jedi Sentinel tree called Force Haze you might want to look at.

[Ahrimon]

Ahrimon, I am actually currently playing a lightsaber focused Human Jedi named Jack. :) I could share my build with you, if you like.

Yes please

[Alejandro]

He's a human Jedi/Soldier. Currently 4 levels Jedi, 2 levels Soldier. Partially a joke based on Samurai Jack. :)

Talents:
Block
Deflect
Weapon Specialization: Lightsabers

Feats:
Skill Focus: UTF
Force Training x3
Martial Arts I
Gunnery Specialist (Our group needed another good starship gunner, you can ignore this)
Weapon Focus: Lightsabers
Light Armor (from Soldier)

I wear light armor for some extra Reflex and Fort, but this is my last level of benefiting from it. I'll be picking up the DR 10 Force talent and using that. :)

High Strength, decent Wisdom and Charisma.

Force Powers:
Battle Strike x2
Saber Swarm x2
Draw Closer x2
Surge
Rebuke
Swift Flank

I wield a regular lightsaber two handed, and make use of the list of powers to score (hopefully) powerful hits, or multiple hits, or both. Later I will learn Soresu, Juyo, and Vaapad, and pick up a few other lightsaber form powers. :)

Edit: In the future, once I have Jedi Master, if I get into a particularly nasty or unlucky battle and run out of my sabery powers, I can always burn a round to use Serenity, then make a Use the Force check as a natural 20 and regain them.

[Jeivar]

I have a question that's not really related to any particular system:

Just how is Jedi authority supposed to work, when they're out on adventures? I'm only moderately familiar with the expanded universe. If a Jedi captures a gangster, pirate, terrorist or whatever... does s/he bring them back to the Jedi Council or to Republic whatever or what?

[Nerd-o-rama]

I have a question that's not really related to any particular system:

Just how is Jedi authority supposed to work, when they're out on adventures? I'm only moderately familiar with the expanded universe. If a Jedi captures a gangster, pirate, terrorist or whatever... does s/he bring them back to the Jedi Council or to Republic whatever or what?

It mostly depends on the Jedi, as well as the era; the Order was more centralized and closer-aligned with the Republic government at some points than others. Things like this are usually left up to individual discernment, although the Jedi Council might issue standing orders if there's a major conflict going on.

Generally speaking, I imagine a captured or surrendered opponent would be handed over to whatever authority actually has jurisdiction; a local pirate to the system's law enforcement, people preying on hyperspace routes or attacking multiple systems to a representative of the Republic, Dark Force-users to the Jedi Council, etc.

Other useful notes: remember that Jedi have no compunction about killing in self-defense, but they do not kill prisoners; that would be a pretty major Dark Side transgression. As for the Republic, also remember that it does not have a standing army except in times of major galactic war. If you're talking about a Republic rather than Imperial or local authority, you're talking law enforcement, not the army, unless the Clone Wars or something of that scale are happening. The New Republic is basically constantly at war, though, so they don't really have the same policies as the Old, and they certainly have a shakier relationship with the Jedi Order.

[Thrysierius]

Somewhat off-topic from the current status quo but I'm curious.

How many times have you redone a character build based on events in the campaign you're in? I had a level 20 multi-classed build that I have tweaked more times than I can count, mostly due to changes in the campaign or further examination of rules and cost/benefit analysis.

[LibraryOgre]

I have a question that's not really related to any particular system:

Just how is Jedi authority supposed to work, when they're out on adventures? I'm only moderately familiar with the expanded universe. If a Jedi captures a gangster, pirate, terrorist or whatever... does s/he bring them back to the Jedi Council or to Republic whatever or what?

In general, I tend to consider Jedi as being somewhat like bonded peace officers with Galactic authority... they go wherever they like, and right what wrongs they may, usually turning wrong-doers over to the local authorities, or regional authorities if the local authorities are the problem. You might have Jedi bounty-hunters who go into non-Republic space and deal with fugitives, but most work more like the Lone Ranger than Marshall Dillon... come into town, deal with the bad guys, then ride off.

[Mando Knight]

In general, I tend to consider Jedi as being somewhat like bonded peace officers with Galactic authority... they go wherever they like, and right what wrongs they may, usually turning wrong-doers over to the local authorities, or regional authorities if the local authorities are the problem. You might have Jedi bounty-hunters who go into non-Republic space and deal with fugitives, but most work more like the Lone Ranger than Marshall Dillon... come into town, deal with the bad guys, then ride off.

"Lone Ranger" is a pretty good way of looking at it. Though if the problem's a rogue Jedi, they probably wouldn't usually turn them over to local/regional authorities.

[Alexander leah]

i skipped a session and before i could talk to the gm about my nre privaater character my friend ****ed up everything!! It seems that after i sacrificed myself to save their ass they still succeded into dying all apart from the ex mandalorian!
It seems that we will resume by being some kind of republic commando, they already decided on the new characters, also my DM told me to prepare another character along the pirate, because he liked it and promised me that there will be another campaing on him, but right now he doenst know how to make him join the campaing , the new directive are:no force user, need to have some connection to the republic military, the other charcaters are:
A Taung ex madalorian, heavy armor and burstspecialist
A melee droid, some kind of damage dealing nightmare
A field Medic, soldier medic, secondary using autofire
Noble officer, face buffer and martial artist as secondary role
Scout infiltrator, stealth and pin/crush CT killer with a garrote

what you think could be a good addition to this commando?(also, apart from the noble the other character should be fairly optimized, so i expect tough encounter)

[kreenlover]

Maybe go with a noble/soldier battlefield controller type? There are some good builds out there using the AoO talents from GaW.
Otherwise I'd say go with a military pilot. Fighter pilots are notoriously tough in combat as well as in the cockpit and it really only takes one feat and a skill to be a 'military pilot' themed. For the meat and potatoes go with a generic all-round character. Focus mostly on ranged weapon attacks, but take martial arts, dodge, etc.

Just my two bits

[Krazzman]

Well yesterday was all sorts of funny.

We ordered quite some books and after double and rechecking and redoublechecking everything we got The Force Unleashed Campaign guide without having an order notice... maybe they messed up and send us this instead of scum and villainy... but I hope not.

Then we built characters.

We have now:
Garm Frost Human Scout1/Jedi1 with Evasion and Deflect as talents, Force Sensivity, Shake it off and SF:UtF as feats.
Dorn Tio Kel'dor Noble1/Jedi1 with ??? and Deflect as talents, Force Sensivity as feat (did not meet prereqs for Linguist).
Thorin Sol Kel'dor Jedi2 with ??? as Talent, Force Sensivity, SF:UtF and Force Training as feats. Powers Mind Trick, Surge and 2 others.

Stats were assigned via Grid Method or Matrix Method, unsure how to call it. I probably got the best pick of them all.
We rolled 6x6 (4d6b3 reroll everything under 8) and got quite some good arrays out of it.

Then we basically played the Prologue.
The Clone Wars are active for 1 year. We 3 were rather rushed to become a Jedi and our Lightsaber is Old and has some malfunctions. We are on a battle cruiser and get attacked by separatist droid units. After dispatching some droid with the help of some Troopers and inaction of Thorin Sol we basically flee to the capsules, take 5 troopers with us and flee due to the ship being utterly destroyed. (We followed an unknown Signal that seemed to be a trap). Dorn Tio was heavily wounded (is at 1 HP and -1 CT).
Our capsule gets hit by a stray bolt and due to low oxygen slip into unconciousness... drifting towards an unknown planet.

So we are left with a cliffhanger right from the beginning. What will happen with us on that planet? Will we survive? I am thinking about writing an AdventureLog for this. Since I can bug the DM for the details this could be quite awesome. Thinking about the medium... should I use a blog? Or should I just use a textfile?

[Nerd-o-rama]

So despite barely knowing the system I decided to start running a game over in the PbP section (if you're interested). Any important pitfalls or traps to avoid in running in running a game of this, other than the obvious like "overdoing it on the cameos" and "letting people argue with my plot because it conflicts with a background detail in The Glove of Darth Vader"?

EDIT: Crap I followed a link from Wookiepedia out of sheer whimsy and now I'll be here all day.

[Alejandro]

So despite barely knowing the system I decided to start running a game over in the PbP section (if you're interested). Any important pitfalls or traps to avoid in running in running a game of this, other than the obvious like "overdoing it on the cameos" and "letting people argue with my plot because it conflicts with a background detail in The Glove of Darth Vader"?

EDIT: Crap I followed a link from Wookiepedia out of sheer whimsy and now I'll be here all day.

The Glove of Darth Vader had more literary depth and purpose of storyline than Jar Jar's entire character concept.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Comparing a story and a character is a little unfair (and also the lowest of low-hanging fruit in Jar-Jar's case), and I'm not knocking GoDV as a children's book. It's just tended to be ignored by literally everything else since.

[kreenlover]

The best advice I can give for running a Saga Game is stick to the movies. Stick to that feel. Go for the space western, people on rundown hunk'o'junk spaceships flying around blasting people who get in their way and also trying to fight against the evil government. And no, not firefly, but Star Wars!
Don't make the Force technical; make it mysterious. Make the Dark Side easy and seductive, faster, better in the short term but not in the long run. Start each game with some text and a crawl, and end each one on a cliffhanger. Have evil villains and anti-heroes, villains you hate to love and love to hate, heroes who you can identify with, and stuff like that.

Also, single boss fights don't work well in this system, but neither does tons of mooks (one of em will crit by accident. I took out two players in one round because the SBDs got three crits right off the bat). If you have a sith fight make sure that the other characters stay relevant. And above all do not make it 'The Further Adventures of Jediboy! and his friends'
I did steal that line from someone above, but it is still relevant

[Krazzman]

Implement the movies but change them. Be like spielberg but not be as bad as he is. Change or fill the gaps or "unknown" things.

Have a rough concept. Like you want your group to encounter X things. Be they a Princess or something different.

ALso why does everyone hate jar jar? I thought he was quite an interesting character? He is a mayor part of WHY Palpatine was even in the right position.

[Alejandro]

Kreenlover, that's part of why the prequels bombed for fans. Everything was too shiny. No ships like the Falcon, and almost no blasting. Just a lot of Jedi arguing. :)

Krazzman, people hate Jar Jar because he was absolutely unnecessary and irritating to boot. Probably why, after his giant bomb in TPM, they had him appear much less in the next two.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Jar-Jar's problem was that he had no character outside of being comic relief. Then again no one else in Episode I had any character outside of being The Old Master or The Kid or The Princess or whatever the hell Obi-Wan's character was supposed to be, so really, it comes down to the fact that people found him annoying.

And I guess I'm ignoring all this advice already by going for a post-KOTOR game, but then again that time period was more or less a copy of the movies with a tighter plot in the first part and more grimdark in the second part anyway.

[Krazzman]

Kreenlover, that's part of why the prequels bombed for fans. Everything was too shiny. No ships like the Falcon, and almost no blasting. Just a lot of Jedi arguing. :)

Krazzman, people hate Jar Jar because he was absolutely unnecessary and irritating to boot. Probably why, after his giant bomb in TPM, they had him appear much less in the next two.

I don't know where you got that from Episode 4 through 6 are dirt boring in my opinion. I watched them and will probably soon-ish read the book (Episode 1 through 6) but I still think them pretty mediocre. I still fall asleep in Episode 6... also Episode 6 has the problem with Ewoks and degrading troopers through making it look like they have been beaten by teddybears.
Episode 5 was okay-ish.
Episode 4's remake is indeed bad. Han shot first. Doesn't matter what spielberg thinks about this.
Again Jar Jar is probably the most important person in the political campaign of Palpatine. He was intended as clumsy to give him the depth. Afterwards he is still clumsy but not that annoying. He fools separatists that he is a jedi during the clone wars and was always a loyal supporter of palpatine. He is indeed a quite important figure. The people that mostly hate Jar Jar (at least the ones I met) were all hung up on 2 things. Either that it is dumb that Jar Jar is a protagonist and the second were annoyed by his antics because "Star Wars is not for Kids".

[Nerd-o-rama]

I was going to argue with you, but then you called The Empire Strikes Back "okay-ish". I don't think I can deal with that sort of worldview.

[Alejandro]

I was going to argue with you, but then you called The Empire Strikes Back "okay-ish". I don't think I can deal with that sort of worldview.

Seconded.

Star Wars is at its best when it is NOT for kids. That's why everyone is so excited that the person who wrote ESB will be writing Episode VII.

Qui-gon was the only interesting character in TPM, which is why he had to die. Jar Jar... well, you could remove him entirely from the films and basically the same things would happen. Other than a contrived and forced moment as a 'senator', he makes no contributions to the story and does not grow or develop as a character.

[Nerd-o-rama]

It's not even that TESB is particular dark or un-kiddy (I mean, they copied the same damn plot for the second season of Avatar the Last Airbender [which is why that's the best season]). It's the best because it's the most character-focused and has a tighter and higher-tension plot than the other films barring Revenge of the Sith and maybe the original.

[Krazzman]

Seconded.

Star Wars is at its best when it is NOT for kids. That's why everyone is so excited that the person who wrote ESB will be writing Episode VII.

Qui-gon was the only interesting character in TPM, which is why he had to die. Jar Jar... well, you could remove him entirely from the films and basically the same things would happen. Other than a contrived and forced moment as a 'senator', he makes no contributions to the story and does not grow or develop as a character.

But you two read the books did you? The movies might portay him wrong but Qui Gon is the main Protagonist. Obi Wan had a meaning there as his nearly finished Padawan. Anakin is the Chosen One with whom Qui Gon finally fulfilled his destiny.

And Episode 7? I doubt I will watch it in cinemas. But that is most likely the fault of the regisseur and cast.

About ESB... yes an ok movie. A good plot but in my eyes everything drags itself too long. Also, at least the dialogues in German are slow Luke always sounds as if he has to think for every single word he will speak.
Episode 4 and 5 are in my eyes the better movies of that trilogy. With 5 being the strongest. Okay-ish should meant that I don't have much negative to say about it. Episode 4 had some clunky scenes that are better explained in the books and the remakes are like really clusterf***ing bad.

[Drogorn]

...German...

Well there's your problem...

They were shot in English. You understand English. Watch them in English.