Searching for Star Wars RPI
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@Seraphim73 said in Searching for Star Wars RPI:
A couple of the Talents actually don't do -anything- without house rules. Expert Pilot: Elusive Dogfighter, for instance, adds a penalty to attacks that... can't happen, because the person with the Talent won the Pilot check in the dogfight already. It's not the only one. Some Talents/Feats are just bad.
Yeah, but the penalty applies to gunners in the dogfight. The pilot may not be able to shoot, but the gunner can do so at -5 penalty. It's not super-useful, but Y-Wings and other two-man ships have an advantage in a dogfight.
That said, I know what @Arkandel is getting at. You shouldn't feel compelled to twink out to be an effective whatever, but the system is such that you can be more effective in one build over the other. The more focused you go, the better you are: e.g., my PC would be a much better engineer/ship designer if she plopped down more shit into Superior Tech, but she can also pilot a ship, blow shit up, sneak around, and generally be a pretty good tech-based rogue PC.
One of the benefits to SAGA is that leveling up automatically makes you better in combat. Further, squad-based tactics put a premium on players that work as part of a team, which is also a departure from WoD. So, my tech-based rogue PC is pretty damn good against low-level twerps, no matter what Feats and Talents I take.
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For what it's worth, I did not take the comments of the person in question as criticism -- just as surprise. In all fairness, it is a somewhat unusual combination of things to take on the same character, at least at first glance.
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@Autumn You can't take my righteous indignation from me!
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@Arkandel said in Searching for Star Wars RPI:
@Autumn You can't take my righteous indignation from me!
If we were playing Palladium, that's one of the stats you can roll for.
*My bad, it's an insanity you can roll for
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If you were playing Role Master, it would be an Adrenal Skill, and only some classes could learn more than 1 level per class level, but you'd get to roll on the cool chart for crits and damage.
They really should do a RoleMaster social combat chart.
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@Misadventure said in Searching for Star Wars RPI:
They really should do a RoleMaster social combat chart.
As someone who started gaming by playing a bunch of Rolemaster (It was the second game I played, first was the TSR Marvel Superheroes) I am not sure weather to think such a thing would be wondrous or to run screaming into the night. Either way enjoy the +1.
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@ThatGuyThere Don't you fucking encourage @Misadventure.
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@Ganymede Sadly, nope! I wish that were the case. The additional penalty only applies to the pilot facing you in the dogfight:
Elusive Dogfighter: When engaged in a dogfight, any enemy pilot engaged in the same dogfight takes a -10 penalty on attack rolls when you succeed on the opposed Pilot check (see Attacking in a Dogfight, page 171).
I think what they were GOING for is that if you succeed in the opposed Pilot check, -all- enemies shooting at you get a -10, like with the Jedi Guardian Talent Elusive Target.
To the @Arkandel 's point, yeah. If you're looked down on because you don't twink, that's bad. If people are willing to give you tips on building a character if you want them, I see that as good, but if they thrust them upon you whether you want them or not, and/or without even asking, that's bad.
And to be perfectly fair, at least on the game that DoD sprung from (Generations of Darkness), people talked a big game about building awesome +sheets, but stats were... unimportant. Except for the plots that I and a few others ran, the rules weren't followed and things were very freeform -- which can be good and bad. It can lead to awesome stories, or it can lead to the (just barely) Force Sensitive Zeltron Death Watch Mandalorian Empress of the jungle planet (yes, really) Tattooine using Move Light Object to lift a creature larger than a speeder, because obviously she is Force Sensitive, so she can lift big things, even if she doesn't have the Move Object Force Power.
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@Seraphim73 said in Searching for Star Wars RPI:
Except for the plots that I and a few others ran, the rules weren't followed and things were very freeform -- which can be good and bad. It can lead to awesome stories, or it can lead to the (just barely) Force Sensitive Zeltron Death Watch Mandalorian Empress of the jungle planet (yes, really) Tattooine using Move Light Object to lift a creature larger than a speeder, because obviously she is Force Sensitive, so she can lift big things, even if she doesn't have the Move Object Force Power.
This may be the case, and these players may still be about. I don't know.
So far, though, staff has been naught but helpful. If they are okay with players running plots, then it's only a matter of time before some of us start doing this with an eye towards detail. I'm all for hand-wavium when needed, but you cheapen the system by blatantly ignoring certain things.
Personally, I'd like to run a big space battle.
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@Ganymede There's actually a system in place to help out for muthering great space battles. Check out +help +ships. It'll track attacks, battery damage, shields, and CT-steps for a large number of capital ships at once. Combined with a 2:1 map grid (I love +maps), it's great for running capship battles.
Edit: I just did it there, didn't I? I assumed you didn't know the fancy way to do something and just told you. Well, if you didn't know about +ships, enjoy. If you did, I apologize sincerely.
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@Seraphim73 said in Searching for Star Wars RPI:
or it can lead to the (just barely) Force Sensitive Zeltron Death Watch Mandalorian Empress of the jungle planet (yes, really) Tattooine using Move Light Object to lift a creature larger than a speeder, because obviously she is Force Sensitive, so she can lift big things, even if she doesn't have the Move Object Force Power.
@Ganymede said in Searching for Star Wars RPI:
This may be the case, and these players may still be about. I don't know.
The beauty of it is that it was a staff member's character, not just a random player. Didn't she also marry Jabba the Hutt?
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@Faceless Yup... but only for show, of course.
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Looking forward to hearing more about this new SAGA game mentioned.
I tried DoD (and its predecessor) so many times, but there was always this overwhelming feeling of being a nobody, something I've never really felt on a WoD game, even when I make a new 10xp newb on a game where the Prince and Primogen Council are all PCs and have 100+ xp.
On the SAGA games there was always this sense of 'eh a new person, who cares, even if you started at level 8, we have these level 12 people who are /massively/ better than you, have all the plots designed around them, and they have no use for you because they can do everything themselves.' I can make a completely useless vampire on a VtR game and somebody will probably still want me around for something or other, even if it's just as a sacrificial pawn.
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If there are powers/merits/skills whatever that are actually useless and will actively KEEP players from being included in RP...why are they available?
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@Kanye-Qwest said in Searching for Star Wars RPI:
If there are powers/merits/skills whatever that are actually useless and will actively KEEP players from being included in RP...why are they available?
Saga is a D20 based rule set, they all have a bunch of feats/talents/etc that are only useful in corner case scenarios that only make sense if you make that situation the focus of your char which can work fine in a TT where the GM can plan things easier, on a much they are mostly trinkets. As to why they are on the game, my guess would be the staff likely just said include everything published for the system.
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@Tempest Any level-based game is going to have problems with that. One thing that -could- be implemented to limit it would be to scale the starting level, but as you pointed out, with d20, once you get to a certain level, even specialists of a lower level can't keep up.
Perhaps it's more about Staff making sure that there are reasons for the high-level characters to delegate ("you're going to be busy doing X mission, and you also need someone to do Y mission to allow yours to have maximum impact, go find a group to do it."), and opportunities for lower-level characters to catch up quickly. Honestly, I think that level-capping some events is the absolute best way to handle that. So maybe there's a bunch of events for level 3-8, with a more occasional (but probably a bit more epic) event for level 9-12 or 9+.
@Kanye-Qwest Usually because Staffs are reluctant to remove options, and there is always a drive to limit House Rules. I never could convince the rest of the Staff on KotOR or Dark Times to trim some of the useless or wildly under-powered Feats/Talents.
Whether there are any abilities that actively keep players from being included in RP is more of a game culture call, in my opinion... if Staff allows players to tear down other players for picking up particular abilities, that's a bigger problem with the game's culture in my opinion.
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@Kanye-Qwest said in Searching for Star Wars RPI:
If there are powers/merits/skills whatever that are actually useless and will actively KEEP players from being included in RP...why are they available?
Because they aren't totally and completely useless, or are prerequisites to other, better powers.
Take Tech Specialist as a Feat. Kind of okay. You need it for Superior Tech to upgrade shit hardcore. Or Starship Designer, which allows you to modify your ships.
I could have taken more useful feats, but I wanted to have the ability to upgrade my YT-1300. So, you give a little. Such is the nature of the SAGA edition -- and any other game built off of D&D.
Power attack? Kind of blows. Cleave? Much better.
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FFG's new Star Wars engine blows Saga and D6 out of the water, in that it actually feels like Star Wars. But then, that would require Mushers to do something new. Which means it will never happen.
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@GamerNGeek said in Searching for Star Wars RPI:
FFG's new Star Wars engine blows Saga and D6 out of the water, in that it actually feels like Star Wars. But then, that would require Mushers to do something new. Which means it will never happen.
I like FFG's engine as well, actually. If a game used it, I would probably jump right in; I'm not a huge fan of Feats, Talents, and d20s.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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@Ganymede I'll have to look into this FFG whatever that stands for and check it out.
If it's that good though it's probably a system that doesn't translate well to MU*'s.
I've run into a couple of systems that I really liked until they dropped something like, drawing cards out of the deck, onto the system
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