Star Wars Roleplaying Game: Saga Edition

Overall score:

Star Wars has had a strange love-hate relationship with gamers for many years now, 4 different RPG games, 4 different miniature games, heck there’s 5 miniature games if you count Hasbro’s Attatix line, and countless video games. Some have done quite well, WEG Star Wars, some haven’t, the original D20 version of the game. Star Wars Saga Edition is the 4th RPG rule set the franchise has seen and the third from Wizards of the Coast since they revived the license back in 2000, some may wonder why Wizards keeps on releasing version after version if they don’t do well (you need to remember that unlike D&D Star Wars is licensed from Lucas Arts so to break even Wizards has to sell more since they make less off of each book sold)?

Every D20 version has had to live up to the WEG D6 version that many gamers hold very dear and Wizards, being aware of this, even had one of the original designers of that version—Bill Slavicsek— coauthor the D20 version (also an interesting note Ed Stark, one of the original D&D 3.0 designers also use to work on the WEG version of Star Wars) and had another WEG designer write a forward to the book. While this was a noble effort from Wizards to say to the Star Wars RPG fans that they were “passed the torch” from WEG and they were being very considerate of the old rules in the end it’s what killed the original D20 (and the D20 Revised rules) because the designers took rules from one system, D6, into D20 which didn’t work well after translation and the game ended up having many flaws that were almost all relating to an over zealous approach of placing as many of the rules from the D6 version into the D20. And a few years ago Wizards scrapped the Revised RPG (which was put out to address some of the biggest game play problems) in favor of the Star Wars Miniature line, which was significantly more popular.

Now after a long break from the Star Wars RPG Wizards is trying again at building a successful like with the Saga Edition and this time they’ve come at it from a new approach—building the game up from scratch and only borrowing things from the other versions that worked with the new D20 rules presented in the book. A lot of people have called it the “dumbed down” or “over simplified” version of D20 that D&D used but I see the rules as very streamlined version of the D20 rules, possibly a 4.0 version of the rules, and you can tell the rules were meant to fit the setting instead of trying to make a setting fit a set of rules which is usually why licensed properties for RPG systems don’t always feel right rules wise.

The base rules are very D20ish, borrowing more from D20 Modern then from D&D, you’ve got the same attributes that govern the same abilities, you’ve got the same rules (more or less—I’ll explain more below) for combat and classes are much like D20 Modern where instead of getting pre-determined abilities every level you chose from skill trees every even level and feats every odd (in addition to the standard feat you get every 3). The biggest changes have been made in skills and combat. There are no skill points in Saga edition, you’re either proficient with a skill—which grants you a +5 to your roll—or you’re not. You gain proficiency in a skill at 1st level based off your class, some classes gain more then others, or by feats and you add half your character level to all skill checks. The interesting thing about skills now is that many feats and some abilities from other versions of D20 have now been rolled into skills (such as endurance, run, and improve initiative—which is a skill now) and many require proficiency in a skill to because all skills (except Use the Force, swim and climb) have trained and untrained abilities attached to them. And while skill points were a nice way to show one character being better at something then another this new method skill allows for some of that but it makes all characters better and it feels more cinematic and heroic—which fits in with Star Wars.

Also gone is Armor Class, instead all attacks are made against your saving throws (Reflex, Fortitude and Will) which now work like how Armor Class would-the attacker has to beat your save to succeed—and you can add your level to all three of these saves as well. I say can because if you wear armor instead you loose your level bonus to Reflex and Fortitude and gain that armor’s bonus instead. Which makes armor really useful for low levels but worthless for higher levels (more on this later).

The only thing to make it from the WEG version is wound levels which is called Condition in Saga, how it works is as you take damage you have the possibility of having your condition changed and as it lowers you gain negatives to your actions (for example: attack, skill checks) till you get to the point that you are unconscious (but not dead). When a physical attack succeeds you compare the total versus your Damage Threshold and if the attack is greater you lowers your condition. You still have your normal hit points as in D20 but this feels right since it never made since with the HP system that you could loose ¾ of your life and still fight the same, there are many various ways to increase your damage threshold (such as armor) or improve your condition during combat that give you very viable character build options.

Character classes and the Force are the last thing I want to cover in extensive detail, like mentioned above you choose from talent trees and all the classes (which will be familiar to any Star Wars RPG veteran since the names haven’t changed) have been very well balanced over previous D20 versions. The Nobel and the Scout have been given a significant boost in abilities thanks to the talent trees and even the Jedi appears to be very balanced with the rest of the classes (in previous versions the wasn’t the case at all as Jedi were very powerful compared to anything else). Multi-classing is encouraged and there’s no penalty for doing so and a lot of players will wisely do so for Evasion from the Scout (a must have considering how many AOE weapons are in the game) and Improved Armor Defense (which lets you combine your level bonus to your saves with your armor bonus).

An interesting thing is it’s quite easily to become a force user without being a Jedi since all you need to do is take two feats (one to get the ability to use the force and one to get force powers) though starting as a Jedi is still the easiest since you get both of those and the Lightsaber feat at first level. The Force itself has been made more manageable then in previous versions, they now work as Spells might in D&D but on a simpler basis, you can use a Force power in a single encounter the number of times you’ve learned it (by taking a feat, which grants you quite a few) then after the combat is over you regain all the powers you’ve used. This “per encounter” method is again very cinematic and it works quite well since the majority of force powers are as powerful as your D&D Wizard’s but extremely useful, I could see a magic class in D&D built off these rules being quite popular.

There have been a lot of other changes rules wise, charge being a partial action and how many actions you have in a turn, base attack bonus not giving you extra attacks no matter how high it gets and others but they’re not worth covering in detail due to the minor impact they have on the over all game. There’s a lot in this books despite it’s small size (it’s a 1/3rd smaller then your normal Wizards books in height making it a square—which is quite awkward) including droid construction, advanced vehicle combat rules (where were both oddly missing in the original D20 version), rules for making quick non-heroic NPCs (your average stormtrooper which aren’t as powerful as a character of equal level) and beasts.

However you can’t help but feel that you’re getting cheated by the size, the font size is the same (I measured), the margins are even bigger (about 1 ¼ inches off both the top and bottom and ¾ of a inch on the right and left so that’s almost 4 inches total per page) if that can be believed and the art is all reprints from previous books. Yet the price is the same as any other book Wizards puts out of the same thickness. The cynical side of me, which is usually correct, feels this was done as a cost saving method so the book would be more profitable (again due to the license fee) so instead of releasing a thin book Wizards released a stubby one with freaking huge margins. The game is also very heavily miniature based, even including a reprinted Star Wars Miniature map for use, and the book would like you to believe it's more so then D&D yet you really don't need minautres because the main thing they're usfull for--Range-- is completly negated because every ranged weapon in the game has a longer range increment then any map you could easily use could be so the only use for a map is for close combat and line of site. My guess is this was done to keep things consistent with the miniature game, which is stupid and again the cynical me says this was done to try to sell more miniatures (there’s nothing wrong with wanting to sell a product that can be used with this but it’s a rule that doesn’t make sense) or pull Star Wars miniature players into the RPG via some like rules.

All-in-all I’m quite impressed with the Saga Edition, the rules are fun, simple and yet allow for some very complex and unique character builds and while there are some things about it I don’t like I think it’s a very good game that I think anyone will enjoy playing--except maybe those that think Hackmaster is the bee’s knees rules wise--as some hardcore, uber RPG players won’t like the streamlined rules. But not every RPG needs to so complicated you need to have a degree in math to play it. But the size of the book, the margins and some strange rules like range keep this from getting a better score.

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Written by Spriggan on August 01st, 2007