(cont.d) Star Wars SAGA Edition, then care and feeding of

[Eleas]

Star Wars SAGA Edition got discussed in the Recommend me a p&p RPG thread. Since that led to much discussion, I'm creating a new thread here for that purpose. In the interests of brevity, I'm also cutting away some of ShadowDragon's post. SD, I hope this is okay with you, and that you exercise the same with my own posts when appropriate.


On the flexibility of characters:

The problem is that in Star Wars, those who are heroic on the ground are very often those who are also very, very heroic in space. Wedge Antillies, for example, is without a doubt the finest fighter pilot ever to fly. Certainly, Vader and Skywalker would've stood a chance of taking him in a dogfight, but then the canon holds Jedi up as being superior in everything (a point of contention later*,) and he would've definitely given them a run for their money. He's also the only man to be worth more than one Death Star silhouette on his cockpit. But, he was also a damn, damn fine commando on the ground. The same is true over and over, in the numbers of Rogue Squadron and Wraith Squadron, as well as with the legendary Jedi heroes.

It even tries to make allusions to this, stating that while as legendary starfighter pilots go, Obi-Wan Kenobi was not truly amongst them; however, he flew and was able to fly because that was where the action was.

IMHO, this is not impossible unless you assume from the get-go that a Level 8 soldier without everything sunk into ground combat is somehow a subpar ground fighter. I don't think that's the case. Even a diplomacy-optimized Level 8 Noble is a pretty skilled fighter in my book.

But the problem is that that's a very good way for a legendary hero to die an ignominious death to a random, unimportant TIE figher or Vulture droid fighter. Space combat is very deadly, and as your class bonus to defense isn't going to be eclipsing even a starfighter's armor bonus for a very, very long time, your space combat AC isn't going to be tremendously high. When the kind of damage is being thrown around that can kill your starfighter in one good damage roll without a critical, that's a problem.

Myself, I can't see why I should create situations that encourage the players to die that way, really. Why not craft the adventure to suit the characters they have, instead of some sort of generalized combat monsters? (If I'm being a irreverent here, sorry. I dislike min-maxing, as a general rule).

It expects you to have the Vehicular Combat feat to make Piloting rolls to negate the attacks. But what's that, you say? You never Trained in pilot because you never expected to have to fly? So you can't possibly have a feat which requires it trained? Oh well, your choices are (a) risk horrible death, or (b) sit the encounter out.

This is where we differ. My players, and I myself for that matter, play precisely because we want our characters to risk horrible death. Prevailing in the face of that is one of the things that make it an adventure, to my mind.

An untrained hero, even a high-level one, may be able to contribute to a space battle. Certainly, his attack bonus will far eclipse an NPC pilot's, and his heroic bonus to damage won't be inconsequential because it's always added before the laser cannon or torpedo multiplier. But he will not have the survivability to make it truly worth risking a PC, let alone the heroic oomph to be the kind of guy you really want flying on your wing. To put it another way, he'll be about as effective as an elite NPC - and about as survivable. Certainly worth having along, but only if you don't really care if he gets killed.

What is wrong with that level of effectiveness? I can't see it. Why must the players outstrip elite NPCs to be worth having along?

So then, how do you model a heroic PC who's good on the ground and in space? It's not easy, you pretty much have to be a gunslinger of some sort so that your offensive feats can overlap, and a fair few Talents overlap as well if you make the right class and Talent choices. But making a Jedi Ace isn't easy, you're going to have to devote feats to being a starfighter pilot, and very few of your talents will have overlap.

That all depends on our respective interpretation of what constitutes "good", I'd say. I don't think you and I have the same definitions there - I can't stand the Threats of the Galaxy statblocks, for instance.

In short, it becomes impossible to model a hero who's good on the ground and in space without giving him an excess of levels, and he will never be truly capable of performing up to his CL's expectations on ground or in space. Close, maybe, with the right talents and feats and classes, but never up to it.

What's the GM's expectations, then? I think that's the salient point here.

It's definitional, my friend. Take a hero of any given CL. It's expected that he's going to be using every resource available to him to be able to resolve situations on-the-ground; every non-freebie feat to build upon his chosen resolution method, whether it be stealth, commando assault, the Force, talking, guile, whatever.

<snip>

I have seen this expectation in D&D 3.5, outright stated. But I've yet to see it have a similar towering place in SAGA (the instructions to that effect take up only one page at best, and are always couched in a "it should be hard enough for the players to be challenged, but not so hard that they can't survive), and I would find it hugely damaging to the Star Wars atmosphere if it was mandatory. I don't think, speaking for myself, that it would benefit anything I want out of the SAGA edition.

This goes double for the idea of "chosen resolution method". To be honest, I can find no support for this in the rules whatsoever; the CLs are already hopelessly borked if we're going to use them, especially when we factor in Starships of the Galaxy and various feat/talent combos. Why would an arms race of optimized builds help? I can't see it, myself. All of our characters tend to be fairly rounded, flawed individuals. That makes them much more fun to play than a one-trick pony who always does the same thing, particularly when the opposition is jacked up as well to the point where his one trick doesn't even work consistently.

As for resources, I don't want either the resource management or combat build meta-think to take root in my SAGA Edition games. Not when the game actually encourages and responds well to playing the WEG way, with matinee atmosphere spattering all across the bulkheads.

But, even if he's managing to do that, he's still not going to be performing up to his CL's worth, because someone who's spent it all on one form of resolving issues - the expectation in a d20 CL system - will still be better at it than he will be.

I think this is where we differ. I don't see optimized builds as always being vital in a d20 CL system, and certainly not in the SAGA Edition.


On becoming a decent pilot by taking the Force pilot talent:

It saves him a feat or two and lets him apply his UtF skill training and Focus on Piloting checks, yes. However, it's a feat that is otherwise useless.

Yeah, this is where our styles don't meet, I think. You think it would be a useless talent. I think a character built on this premise would be without meaning (in my game, I should say - if it works for you, you should go for it). It is a character that would be able to do one thing well, but would, in all other situations, be useless.

It's only applicability is to vehicular combat, it won't help him in a lightsaber duel or a Force duel with a Sith Lord unless the duel happens to be taking place from the back of a speeder bike! Which is, admittedly, very Awesome, but you can't count on every Sith Lord being obliging enough to (a) get on a speeder bike of his own and joust with you, or (b) stand still and let you make ride-by attacks. He'll either run into the kind of quarters where your bike will be detrimental, not advantageous, or set off an EMP or use Drain Energy or otherwise crush or disable your bike.

Why? You're assuming this, and also assuming that the Sith Lord is a "build" by himself. Why do we start from the assumption that both the hero and the villain are intensely focused on one particular area, and that this is the way it's supposed to be? If instead we created a Sith Lord who was multi-competent (in my interpretation, i.e. you might say split 50/50 between areas), then we could have a far more dynamic enemy able to toy with the players through multiple settings.

Could've gone so bad, so very fast. All it takes is one natural 20, and you either have to spend a Destiny Point or die. I pulled this on one of my players, and I had house rules in place (admittedly not this one,) intended to make them capable pilots as well as ground-pounders. He was shot by a Syck - think "crappiest little thing ever." About on-par with a TIE fighter, little heavier shielded, no better armed.

TIEs are fairly lethal, actually, as they should be given they're the Empire's mainstay interceptor. Anyway, had the Jedi been shot down, what would be the problem? Have her use the escape pod as the ship explodes, have her picked up or have the ship follow her down into the jungle. Problem solved - now they're on the ground, and she's hunted, and they're having a good time. Plus, now the player knows she's vulnerable. That's excitement right there.

But really, single-player campaigns invite this however you do it. A lone PC simply isn't as resilient to the vagaries of fortune as a group of them would be.



On Move Object... in space!:

It's true, of course. But it's not always going to be that helpful; for instance, you Force Move him - to where? On the ground, if nothing else, you can rip up a hunk of ground or rip down a hunk of ceiling on someone, or grab him and toss him into same if you beat the right DCs. But in space, unless he's conveniently near to an obstacle or a ship you don't mind crunching - and assuming the other target, if mobile, doesn't succeed on a reflexive Pilot check to evade the collision - you can't do much with it. If you're on a space transport, maybe pull him back into optimal range for your gunners, but that's about it.

That depends on the situation. It's still a damn useful power to have. But again, I think we approach this in diametrically opposed ways. If I had a player using Move Object in this way, it would be an impressive, dramatic showing, and would probably be the climax of that session. You know, the players are in a beat-up Gthroc, trying to escape the pirates. The pirates have lock. The hyperdrive is computing, but the pirates are already opening fire... and the young Jedi raises her hand to the viewport, and pushes.

I think it's an important house-rule, really. Star Wars is as much about starfighter combat as it is about applying lightsaber or blaster to Stormtrooper's codpieces.

I think all of those are sideshows to what Star Wars is on a deeper level. Adventure, and matinee danger, and dashing heroes, and despicable villains. To me, that definitely doesn't gel with the format of running through prepared encounters with the intent of crushing all enemies.

The easiest, quickest hack is also the one that lets the heroes experience the full range of activity. You can throw an elite squadron at them if they all have a stat sheet with their full PC resources put into fighting in space. You can give them a mission to take down that Star Destroyer.*

That's actually not a problem for me: I tend to give them those missions anyway. I just let them find a way to equalize the situation. Usually, they do it by convincing a lot of people to help.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Star Wars SAGA Edition got discussed in the Recommend me a p&p RPG thread. Since that led to much discussion, I'm creating a new thread here for that purpose. In the interests of brevity, I'm also cutting away some of ShadowDragon's post. SD, I hope this is okay with you, and that you exercise the same with my own posts when appropriate.

Sure. I don't mind.

On the flexibility of characters:

The problem is that in Star Wars, those who are heroic on the ground are very often those who are also very, very heroic in space. Wedge Antillies, for example, is without a doubt the finest fighter pilot ever to fly. Certainly, Vader and Skywalker would've stood a chance of taking him in a dogfight, but then the canon holds Jedi up as being superior in everything (a point of contention later*,) and he would've definitely given them a run for their money. He's also the only man to be worth more than one Death Star silhouette on his cockpit. But, he was also a damn, damn fine commando on the ground. The same is true over and over, in the numbers of Rogue Squadron and Wraith Squadron, as well as with the legendary Jedi heroes.

It even tries to make allusions to this, stating that while as legendary starfighter pilots go, Obi-Wan Kenobi was not truly amongst them; however, he flew and was able to fly because that was where the action was.

IMHO, this is not impossible unless you assume from the get-go that a Level 8 soldier without everything sunk into ground combat is somehow a subpar ground fighter. I don't think that's the case. Even a diplomacy-optimized Level 8 Noble is a pretty skilled fighter in my book.

I do; I play with the expectation that the characters will be very, very optimized for what they do. SAGA helps this by providing every character with a minimal competency at things they don't do by trade, which is why a level 8 noble can clean house with ordinary Stormtroopers. However, that level 8 Noble will (rightly) get his ass handed to him if he faces Stormtrooper Elite TK-422-k1ck, a level 6 Heroic Stormtrooper Commando, in combat. It is expected, however, that the level 8 Soldier, having sunk all of his resources into being a badass soldier on the ground, will be able to mop the floor with TK-422-k1ck.

But the problem is that that's a very good way for a legendary hero to die an ignominious death to a random, unimportant TIE figher or Vulture droid fighter. Space combat is very deadly, and as your class bonus to defense isn't going to be eclipsing even a starfighter's armor bonus for a very, very long time, your space combat AC isn't going to be tremendously high. When the kind of damage is being thrown around that can kill your starfighter in one good damage roll without a critical, that's a problem.

Myself, I can't see why I should create situations that encourage the players to die that way, really. Why not craft the adventure to suit the characters they have, instead of some sort of generalized combat monsters? (If I'm being a irreverent here, sorry. I dislike min-maxing, as a general rule).

What do you plan to send them against in space combat, then? Custom-statted shit-on-a-flying-shingle? The weakest starfighter in the books, the TIE/ln, has cannons which are easily capable of vaporizing another starfighter with a good roll. You need heroic character resources sunk into space combat to be capable of surviving it.

Or do you just plan to say "oh well, since only one of you have any piloting skills to speak of, the rest of you can just sit down and sit this one out, or take these starfighters and fly up there and die horribly on a bad roll."

It expects you to have the Vehicular Combat feat to make Piloting rolls to negate the attacks. But what's that, you say? You never Trained in pilot because you never expected to have to fly? So you can't possibly have a feat which requires it trained? Oh well, your choices are (a) risk horrible death, or (b) sit the encounter out.

This is where we differ. My players, and I myself for that matter, play precisely because we want our characters to risk horrible death. Prevailing in the face of that is one of the things that make it an adventure, to my mind.

The players should never be in actual risk of danger of losing a character (barring a ridiculous rolling situation,) they should just feel like they're in danger of dying. The reason for this is simple: if they don't feel like they're in danger of dying, they won't feel as challenged and exhilarated, but owing to the nature of statistics, if you put them in actual danger of dying, sooner or later they will die. And it's really rather frustrating and ultimately, game-damaging, if that happens, but most especially when it happens to a not particularly consequential character.

An untrained hero, even a high-level one, may be able to contribute to a space battle. Certainly, his attack bonus will far eclipse an NPC pilot's, and his heroic bonus to damage won't be inconsequential because it's always added before the laser cannon or torpedo multiplier. But he will not have the survivability to make it truly worth risking a PC, let alone the heroic oomph to be the kind of guy you really want flying on your wing. To put it another way, he'll be about as effective as an elite NPC - and about as survivable. Certainly worth having along, but only if you don't really care if he gets killed.

What is wrong with that level of effectiveness? I can't see it. Why must the players outstrip elite NPCs to be worth having along?

Because you don't give a damn about elite NPCs. Read any X-Wing book: the guys who don't get mentioned very often, who rarely (if ever) get the spotlight of any section, they have names, may even start romances and stuff, but they drop like flies. Expect any such book to go through at least two not particularly consequentials. Let's give you an example of one of the most egregious ones I think of:

In X-Wing: Wraith Squadron, one of the characters is Jesmine Ackbar; yes, niece of that Ackbar. She has a lot of lines, is a vibrant, dynamic, enjoyable character; if you think anyone deserves to be considered a PC, it's her. Then she gets unceremoniously killed in an unimportant, anticlimactic battle against some random pirates. If it were an RPG, it would've been a case when Jesmine's player had been forced to quit the game, and the GM didn't want to just have her quarters explode for a random technobabble reason.

By way of contrast, Chal'dira (I think I spelled that right) is by all accounts an 'elite' NPC. He's the leader of Ryloth's homegrown defense squadron, and good enough that Wedge Antillies recruits him and his Death Seed Squadron for help against Isard during the Bacta War, then offers Chal'dira a position in Rogue Squadron. Aaaand... Then nothing whatsoever of importance happens to him or is caused by him, until he randomly gets brainwashed by Zsinj, sent to kill Antillies, and dies ignominiously. He had a name, but that was about it; he wasn't important, he was just combat back-up, the guys who fade into the background, doing background dog-fights so the real player characters can have it out with the important enemy NPCs. Chal'Dira was scenery in the story of Wedge Antillies, he wasn't the hero of his own story. He was elite scenery, but he was scenery nontheless; an Extra, if you will. His death means nothing to the players in terms of wrecking their enjoyment of the game (although it may certainly make the characters furious enough to go on a vengeance-driven blood-feud with the guy responsible,) and his abilities in space combat reflect that. He is heads and shoulders above the random "competent pilot," he's clearly an Ace; but he's still going to die to a random newbie pilot if the newbie gets lucky. A PC should never die because a newbie gets lucky.

PCs shouldn't die unless it's something climactic, like holding off a horde of approaching Death Troopers so the others can get to the landing bay and escape. Or in combat with a Sith Lord over a pit leading to a hot reactor core while the chrous is singing.

They shouldn't die to a random, unimportant thing while the Trade Federation March is playing.

So then, how do you model a heroic PC who's good on the ground and in space? It's not easy, you pretty much have to be a gunslinger of some sort so that your offensive feats can overlap, and a fair few Talents overlap as well if you make the right class and Talent choices. But making a Jedi Ace isn't easy, you're going to have to devote feats to being a starfighter pilot, and very few of your talents will have overlap.

That all depends on our respective interpretation of what constitutes "good", I'd say. I don't think you and I have the same definitions there - I can't stand the Threats of the Galaxy statblocks, for instance.

For a PC? I consider "good" to be "having spent every available applicable resource on being the best he can be at his chosen field of competency." This is very different from an NPC's "good", which should be "good enough to survive a round or two of combat with the PCs, then dieing so that the PCs may have a small triumph."

In short, it becomes impossible to model a hero who's good on the ground and in space without giving him an excess of levels, and he will never be truly capable of performing up to his CL's expectations on ground or in space. Close, maybe, with the right talents and feats and classes, but never up to it.

What's the GM's expectations, then? I think that's the salient point here.

For one, I expect that the players will perform far, far superior to any NPC with similar armaments and similar number of nonheroic levels.

It's definitional, my friend. Take a hero of any given CL. It's expected that he's going to be using every resource available to him to be able to resolve situations on-the-ground; every non-freebie feat to build upon his chosen resolution method, whether it be stealth, commando assault, the Force, talking, guile, whatever.

<snip>

I have seen this expectation in D&D 3.5, outright stated. But I've yet to see it have a similar towering place in SAGA (the instructions to that effect take up only one page at best, and are always couched in a "it should be hard enough for the players to be challenged, but not so hard that they can't survive), and I would find it hugely damaging to the Star Wars atmosphere if it was mandatory. I don't think, speaking for myself, that it would benefit anything I want out of the SAGA edition.

Of course they didn't say it that loudly, because that would be as good as admitting that the system they built allows you to be great in space, great on the ground, but not both. Also, wordcount.

This goes double for the idea of "chosen resolution method". To be honest, I can find no support for this in the rules whatsoever; the CLs are already hopelessly borked if we're going to use them, especially when we factor in Starships of the Galaxy and various feat/talent combos. Why would an arms race of optimized builds help? I can't see it, myself. All of our characters tend to be fairly rounded, flawed individuals. That makes them much more fun to play than a one-trick pony who always does the same thing, particularly when the opposition is jacked up as well to the point where his one trick doesn't even work consistently.

Ah, and therein is the problem. You expect that a character must be flawed to be good. I vehemently disagree. I get enough of flaws IRL, I play games to escape from them.

As for resources, I don't want either the resource management or combat build meta-think to take root in my SAGA Edition games. Not when the game actually encourages and responds well to playing the WEG way, with matinee atmosphere spattering all across the bulkheads.

It really doesn't. I've tried to run that way, and my houserules sort-of made it work, but even then it's a bit slow and NPCs are a bit too survivable. The random NPCs should be dropping like flies. But then you get to the Sith Lord, and holy shit have you got your work cut out for you!

But, even if he's managing to do that, he's still not going to be performing up to his CL's worth, because someone who's spent it all on one form of resolving issues - the expectation in a d20 CL system - will still be better at it than he will be.

I think this is where we differ. I don't see optimized builds as always being vital in a d20 CL system, and certainly not in the SAGA Edition.

They are vital, because that's the only way you can be reasonably sure you can succeed. If you cripple your character by taking random shit that doesn't help him do his job, you've hurt the character, you've hurt the party, and you've hurt the game. If you have a Soldier who in a moment of panic is called upon to perform something highly technical and you pull it off, great!

If you then spend your next feat on Skill Training (Mechanics) instead of something that helps you better apply blaster bolt to Stormtrooper, you are a fuck-up. It may be "good roleplaying" for him to suddenly discover a late-life fascination with mechanics and a desire to learn more, but that feat could - and should - have been spent on something that helps you kill people more efficiently, because you're the guy who's going to be called upon to efficiently slaughter bad guys! But now you can't do it as well as you should be able to, and that's going to start grinding down the party. Worse, having spent one feat on Skill Training (Mechanics,) now you spend another on Skill Focus, and you may be a magnifnicent mechanic - but chances are the party already had one! But what the other mechanic can't do is kill people as well as you should have been killing them, and now you can't do that because your character is flawed in the sense of "unable to do his job." You've spent resources fucking around in something that doesn't help you kill, and now when called upon to kill a real rampaging hellbeast, you're not gonna be able to do it - and that +10 (trained) Mechanics check isn't gonna help you do it!

And now you get killed, rather frustratingly.

On becoming a decent pilot by taking the Force pilot talent:

It saves him a feat or two and lets him apply his UtF skill training and Focus on Piloting checks, yes. However, it's a feat that is otherwise useless.

Yeah, this is where our styles don't meet, I think. You think it would be a useless talent. I think a character built on this premise would be without meaning (in my game, I should say - if it works for you, you should go for it). It is a character that would be able to do one thing well, but would, in all other situations, be useless.

It is useless in that it confers you no ability to kill a Sith Lord, or to hack apart Stormtroopers, or to master the ways of the Force. In that it lets you pilot a starfighter as well as it lets you use the Force, it is useful; but piloting starfighters and doing "Jedi" things like locking lightsabers with Sith are mutually exclusive activities.

It's only applicability is to vehicular combat, it won't help him in a lightsaber duel or a Force duel with a Sith Lord unless the duel happens to be taking place from the back of a speeder bike! Which is, admittedly, very Awesome, but you can't count on every Sith Lord being obliging enough to (a) get on a speeder bike of his own and joust with you, or (b) stand still and let you make ride-by attacks. He'll either run into the kind of quarters where your bike will be detrimental, not advantageous, or set off an EMP or use Drain Energy or otherwise crush or disable your bike.

Why? You're assuming this, and also assuming that the Sith Lord is a "build" by himself. Why do we start from the assumption that both the hero and the villain are intensely focused on one particular area, and that this is the way it's supposed to be? If instead we created a Sith Lord who was multi-competent (in my interpretation, i.e. you might say split 50/50 between areas), then we could have a far more dynamic enemy able to toy with the players through multiple settings.

Because now you've crippled the NPC, playing him down to a crippled PC's level, and if there's one un-crippled PC in the party, he's going to wipe the floor with that NPC.

Boba Fett is a bounty hunter. He finds things, and he neutralizes their freedom through one means or another. That is what he does, and it's all that he does. He's a good starfighter pilot because most of his feats are things that will be as applicable in space combat as in ground combat, but he's not taken anything that would've been otherwise applicable to "finding people and killing/capturing them" and spent it on space combat.

By way of contrast, Darth Sideous is a Sith Lord. He's very, very good in a lightsaber fight because he's very high level, but he's spent just as much in force competencies and schmooze as he has in lightsaber combat. He waxes a few Jedi who are likewise split (Kitt Fisto was primarily a Jedi Ace, not a Jedi Master,) or otherwise low-level and unimportant, but when he finds himself facing a Jedi Master who does one thing only - kick ass - he gets his ass kicked as is appropriate, and needs to have someone who likewise does one thing only - kick ass - to save his butt from being booted out the window.

Windu was not the same level as Sideous. Probably three to five below, in fact. This accounts for the fact that he had a hell of a fight beating down on Darth Sideous, but he won because Sideous was un-optimized. The problem with that is that to give him that 'good fight,' with an NPC who's unfocused you need to keep through CL-stacked encounters at him, which means he's going to shoot up through the XP ranks faster. Sooner or later he'll cap out, and only ridiculously stacked encounters (where you just break the rules entirely and give the NPC more feats and powers than he should have) can challenge him. It's his right to build his character that way, and it's fine. The problem is what happens when the others do fuck around and waste resources that should go into "resolving situations in the manner that I am made to do." Well, they either die because anything that's a threat to Samuel L. Motherfucker Windu will slaughterize them, or they get frustrated.

That's a problem, which is why I (a) give my players an over-abundance of character resources, so that they have room to be as good "as expected" and still spread out, and (b) tell them not to neglect their ability in a fight, because I will be building NPCs to match.

Could've gone so bad, so very fast. All it takes is one natural 20, and you either have to spend a Destiny Point or die. I pulled this on one of my players, and I had house rules in place (admittedly not this one,) intended to make them capable pilots as well as ground-pounders. He was shot by a Syck - think "crappiest little thing ever." About on-par with a TIE fighter, little heavier shielded, no better armed.

TIEs are fairly lethal, actually, as they should be given they're the Empire's mainstay interceptor. Anyway, had the Jedi been shot down, what would be the problem? Have her use the escape pod as the ship explodes, have her picked up or have the ship follow her down into the jungle. Problem solved - now they're on the ground, and she's hunted, and they're having a good time. Plus, now the player knows she's vulnerable. That's excitement right there.

No, they're not. TIEs are crap - fast, low-powered guns, no shields, no armor. They're zerglings, and a single zergling shouldn't pose a real risk of obliterating a Hero. If the Jedi had been shot down, the problem would have been that she was dead. Ships blowing up around you tend to deal things like 20d20 damage.

Worse, it was bullshit! Complete and utter bullshit! The players had just gotten their starfighters, the encounter was only there to give them a chance to stretch the starfighters' legs out, play with starfighter combat. They were supposed to wipe the floor with the bad guys, having one of them randomly shot down (and now have no ship, even if they do survive,) would have been stupid and pointless for the story.

But really, single-player campaigns invite this however you do it. A lone PC simply isn't as resilient to the vagaries of fortune as a group of them would be.

It was a group. And having the PC die or lose their starfighter would've been damaging to the group as a whole, since the idea was that they were going to have as many in-space challenges as on-foot, and a PC without a starfighter would've been stupid.

On Move Object... in space!:

It's true, of course. But it's not always going to be that helpful; for instance, you Force Move him - to where? On the ground, if nothing else, you can rip up a hunk of ground or rip down a hunk of ceiling on someone, or grab him and toss him into same if you beat the right DCs. But in space, unless he's conveniently near to an obstacle or a ship you don't mind crunching - and assuming the other target, if mobile, doesn't succeed on a reflexive Pilot check to evade the collision - you can't do much with it. If you're on a space transport, maybe pull him back into optimal range for your gunners, but that's about it.

That depends on the situation. It's still a damn useful power to have. But again, I think we approach this in diametrically opposed ways. If I had a player using Move Object in this way, it would be an impressive, dramatic showing, and would probably be the climax of that session. You know, the players are in a beat-up Gthroc, trying to escape the pirates. The pirates have lock. The hyperdrive is computing, but the pirates are already opening fire... and the young Jedi raises her hand to the viewport, and pushes.

And pushes what, exactly? The range of Move Object in space means that it's certainly not going to move the bad guys out of shooting range. She might manage to make one of them crash into another, but it's an easy-peasy piloting check to negate a collision. Sure, it might've worked, and that would be awesome. But it might also be pointless if there's only one pirate ship and no asteroids to throw him into. It's highly situational, much moreso than Move Object on the ground. It's nice, but don't count on it the way you normally do.

I think it's an important house-rule, really. Star Wars is as much about starfighter combat as it is about applying lightsaber or blaster to Stormtrooper's codpieces.

I think all of those are sideshows to what Star Wars is on a deeper level. Adventure, and matinee danger, and dashing heroes, and despicable villains. To me, that definitely doesn't gel with the format of running through prepared encounters with the intent of crushing all enemies.

I run Star Wars (Saga Edition) with the expectation that combat scenarios are going to play like the missions in a Jedi Knight game; hordes of stormtroopers being mowed down, objectives to accomplish, and free reign in figuring out how to do it, but the expectation is that you're going to do it with violence and lots of it. Cleverness is appreciated, but cleverness should only take you so far.

Now, non-combat times are a different story altogether. But there will be combat, you'd best be able to hack it.

As I always tell me players, "If you can't survive the rollplay, you do not get to roleplay. No Force Ghost for you!"

The easiest, quickest hack is also the one that lets the heroes experience the full range of activity. You can throw an elite squadron at them if they all have a stat sheet with their full PC resources put into fighting in space. You can give them a mission to take down that Star Destroyer.*

That's actually not a problem for me: I tend to give them those missions anyway. I just let them find a way to equalize the situation. Usually, they do it by convincing a lot of people to help.

Nah, a Star Destroyer is something the players should handle. The people who help are there to distract the bad guys so they don't realize they need to be focusing fire on the PCs until it's too late.

[Imperial Overlord]

Space combat is not a problem in Saga. You need to do a couple things:

1) Have fighter pilots in relatively tough fighters, one that can't be one shot killed by typical antifighter weaponry. X-wings and the like. This minimizes death to bad luck.

2) Have a god damn space transport for the rest of the team. Princess Leia doesn't have to be awesome at piloting the Millenium Falcon. That's Han Solo and Chewie's bag. There's plenty for other players to do from restoring shields to manning guns.

3) Keep your opposition realistic. A few PCs aren't going to beat a Star Destroyer without serious back up, but a pack of TIEs is a different matter.

[Raesene]

PCs (and Bossmonster) have a ressource the stadard-TIE-pilot does not have: the Destiny Point. They can negate the random critical hit that threatens to turn them into cinders. And expending a force point is supposed to keep a PC alive - i.e. find the ejection seat button. SWSE is not really a deadly system, you should see Savage World - a single well rolled Fireball-equivalent nearly resulted in a total party kill.

In my group, which is not really into space combat (unfortunately, I'd have liked to run a few more space fights), several characters have taken Pilot as trained skill and Vehicular Combat, because they also work for planetbound vehicles, and using a speeder to travel from A to B is not uncommon. It's Star Wars, so they knew they have to travel between planets and wanted their own pilot (and ship).

It's also possible to give the other caracters something to do in a freighter, they don't have to sit out a space fight. Soldiers could man some guns, a techie could serve as systems operator (regenerating shields, performing repairs) or e.g. use the com system to jam the attacker's sensors, giving them a penalty to hit, etc... And players can get their own fighters or perform aid another rolls.

The difficulty I'm having is challenging the PCs at higher levels (13+ or so) - using lots of level 10 stormtroopers (or the equivalent) is a bit over the top. My players always talk about boarding a Star Destroyer, but I've convinced them that that's A Reallly Bad Idea (because I have some nasty ideas how to handle that situation, even with low-level opponents).

[Simon_Jester]

The difficulty I'm having is challenging the PCs at higher levels (13+ or so) - using lots of level 10 stormtroopers (or the equivalent) is a bit over the top. My players always talk about boarding a Star Destroyer, but I've convinced them that that's A Reallly Bad Idea (because I have some nasty ideas how to handle that situation, even with low-level opponents).

I know you read Eleventh Century Remnant's stuff, so let me guess:

"Computer, I want a hundred-gravity field in that compartment, pointing to the ceiling."
[splat]
"We have a Jedi intruder in engineering. Someone fetch a mop and bucket."

Of course, that would be excessive in an RPG, but you can operate below that level.

[Raesene]

The difficulty I'm having is challenging the PCs at higher levels (13+ or so) - using lots of level 10 stormtroopers (or the equivalent) is a bit over the top. My players always talk about boarding a Star Destroyer, but I've convinced them that that's A Reallly Bad Idea (because I have some nasty ideas how to handle that situation, even with low-level opponents).

I know you read Eleventh Century Remnant's stuff, so let me guess:

"Computer, I want a hundred-gravity field in that compartment, pointing to the ceiling."
[splat]
"We have a Jedi intruder in engineering. Someone fetch a mop and bucket."

Of course, that would be excessive in an RPG, but you can operate below that level.

I'm a nasty DM, but not that cruel I have used inverted gravity (and knockout gas) as a trap before, and it worked very well.

One late, but very welcome, addition to the game was the table giving various difficulties (from easy to heroic) for skill checks based on the party level (in Galaxy at War and Galaxy of Intrigue). I've switched over to this list completely, as the basic DCs given in the core rules are ridiculously easy to beat at higher levels.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Space combat is not a problem in Saga. You need to do a couple things:

1) Have fighter pilots in relatively tough fighters, one that can't be one shot killed by typical antifighter weaponry. X-wings and the like. This minimizes death to bad luck.

And newbie Jedi in a situation where the Republic has suddenly suspended official recognition, let alone materiel and financial support, are supposed to come up with a half a squadron of X-Wings how, exactly? Well, there's always the old five-fingered discount, but finding someone who's so bad it's okay to steal from them who also keeps X-Wings and not TIE Interceptors is kind of hard.

2) Have a god damn space transport for the rest of the team. Princess Leia doesn't have to be awesome at piloting the Millenium Falcon. That's Han Solo and Chewie's bag. There's plenty for other players to do from restoring shields to manning guns.

Have you ever tried playing that? It's awful.
First off, to effectively man the guns, you have to have Weapon Group Proficiency (Heavy). Now, I don't know about you, but I've never seen any evidence that Luke or Leia - or hell, even Chewbacca or Han - were the kind of person capable of shouldering a rocket launcher and blowing up Imperial Walkers.

Second off, it completely deprotagonizes the players to have them manning stations on someone else's ship. A starfighter pilot is the captain of his own fate; he may be technically taking orders, but he can always point his X-Wing third star to the left and hyperspace straight on till morning; more importantly, he chooses where he's going, what he's doing, whose ass will be being vaporized next round, and so forth and so on. It's him and his astromech, alone in a tiny flying box bristling with guns and thermonuclear torpedoes, against the great beyond

But when you're in the transport and you're not the guy no stick? You have no control over where you go. He points that stick somewhere, and you have two choices: go along for the ride, or make a run for the escape pods. If you're a gunner, you have at least the protagonist of choosing whose ass to blow out of the sky, but if the captain (usually the guy on stick) is also giving you orders on that regards ("Shoot the fighter on the left!") and you decide it's better to do something else, you can (and will) catch shit from another player, in-character and probably out of it, for disobeying the skipper's orders.

It's worse if you're the engineer or the guy sitting in the copilot's seat. The engineer's job is solely "roll mechanics to fix the things that blow up, and if everything is hunky-dory, roll mechanics to make something better for a short period of time." The guy in the copilot's seat is pretty much limited to sensor jamming and other Computer Use rolls.

And worse, Space Transports have very little hit points, in some cases there are heavy starfighters with more HP than your average YT-series! One high roll with a proton torpedo and BOOM! That's everybody on that space transport facing the damage of the exploding ship, and vacuum.


Let's review. Putting the players in a space transport means only the pilot and maybe gunners get to do anything fun, the rest are just being skill bitches for the Captain's grand plan and/or keeping everyone alive. There's another word for "a player's skill bitch" - oh right, NPC. It also poses a huge risk of a lot of players dying at once.

I resolved this by giving the players a bunch of starfighters and a space transport. They flew the starfighters and the space transport like they were always on a strike mission, taking relief breaks for leg-jumps on the transport as needed and transferring back to their fighters before jumping to the destination. The transport itself had maneouvering jets, a set of guns under the pilot's control, and a quadlaser under the gunner's control - in space combat, it behaved very much like a very big, beefy if inelegant two-man starfighter.

3) Keep your opposition realistic. A few PCs aren't going to beat a Star Destroyer without serious back up, but a pack of TIEs is a different matter.

Um... Rogue Squadron and Wraith Squadron repeatedly perform this kind of stunt. Their "back-up" generally consists of sacrificial B-Wings to draw fire from them and pound down the shields.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Can a mod nuke the post above this post? I accidentally hit "quote" instead of "edit" above.

Space combat is not a problem in Saga. You need to do a couple things:

1) Have fighter pilots in relatively tough fighters, one that can't be one shot killed by typical antifighter weaponry. X-wings and the like. This minimizes death to bad luck.

And newbie Jedi in a situation where the Republic has suddenly suspended official recognition, let alone materiel and financial support, are supposed to come up with a half a squadron of X-Wings how, exactly? Well, there's always the old five-fingered discount, but finding someone who's so bad it's okay to steal from them who also keeps X-Wings and not TIE Interceptors is kind of hard.

2) Have a god damn space transport for the rest of the team. Princess Leia doesn't have to be awesome at piloting the Millenium Falcon. That's Han Solo and Chewie's bag. There's plenty for other players to do from restoring shields to manning guns.

Have you ever tried playing that? It's awful.
First off, to effectively man the guns, you have to have Weapon Group Proficiency (Heavy). Now, I don't know about you, but I've never seen any evidence that Luke or Leia - or hell, even Chewbacca or Han - were the kind of person capable of shouldering a rocket launcher and blowing up Imperial Walkers.

Second off, it completely deprotagonizes the players to have them manning stations on someone else's ship. A starfighter pilot is the captain of his own fate; he may be technically taking orders, but he can always point his X-Wing third star to the left and hyperspace straight on till morning; more importantly, he chooses where he's going, what he's doing, whose ass will be being vaporized next round, and so forth and so on. It's him and his astromech, alone in a tiny flying box bristling with guns and thermonuclear torpedoes, against the great beyond

But when you're in the transport and you're not the guy no stick? You have no control over where you go. He points that stick somewhere, and you have two choices: go along for the ride, or make a run for the escape pods. If you're a gunner, you have at least the protagonist of choosing whose ass to blow out of the sky, but if the captain (usually the guy on stick) is also giving you orders on that regards ("Shoot the fighter on the left!") and you decide it's better to do something else, you can (and will) catch shit from another player, in-character and probably out of it, for disobeying the skipper's orders.

It's worse if you're the engineer or the guy sitting in the copilot's seat. The engineer's job is solely "roll mechanics to fix the things that blow up, and if everything is hunky-dory, roll mechanics to make something better for a short period of time." The guy in the copilot's seat is pretty much limited to sensor jamming and other Computer Use rolls.

And worse, Space Transports have very little hit points, in some cases there are heavy starfighters with more HP than your average YT-series! One high roll with a proton torpedo and BOOM! That's everybody on that space transport facing the damage of the exploding ship, and vacuum.


Let's review. Putting the players in a space transport means only the pilot and maybe gunners get to do anything fun, the rest are just being skill bitches for the Captain's grand plan and/or keeping everyone alive. There's another word for "a player's skill bitch" - oh right, NPC. It also poses a huge risk of a lot of players dying at once.

I resolved this by giving the players a bunch of starfighters and a space transport. They flew the starfighters and the space transport like they were always on a strike mission, taking relief breaks for leg-jumps on the transport as needed and transferring back to their fighters before jumping to the destination. The transport itself had maneouvering jets, a set of guns under the pilot's control, and a quadlaser under the gunner's control - in space combat, it behaved very much like a very big, beefy if inelegant two-man starfighter.

3) Keep your opposition realistic. A few PCs aren't going to beat a Star Destroyer without serious back up, but a pack of TIEs is a different matter.

Um... Rogue Squadron and Wraith Squadron repeatedly perform this kind of stunt. Their "back-up" generally consists of sacrificial B-Wings to draw fire from them and pound down the shields.

PCs (and Bossmonster) have a ressource the stadard-TIE-pilot does not have: the Destiny Point. They can negate the random critical hit that threatens to turn them into cinders. And expending a force point is supposed to keep a PC alive - i.e. find the ejection seat button. SWSE is not really a deadly system, you should see Savage World - a single well rolled Fireball-equivalent nearly resulted in a total party kill.

That's what happened - the PC spent a DP. But the problem is just that DPs are too rare to be spending on negating hits from random mooks, and starfighters are too expensive and rare and hard to get (without being criminals, that is,) to be spending FPs (a renewable resource, especially in my games) to bail out successfully but lose the ship.

It's also possible to give the other caracters something to do in a freighter, they don't have to sit out a space fight. Soldiers could man some guns, a techie could serve as systems operator (regenerating shields, performing repairs) or e.g. use the com system to jam the attacker's sensors, giving them a penalty to hit, etc... And players can get their own fighters or perform aid another rolls.

Unless the soldier invested in WGP Heavy, he's facing a steep -5 penalty to his attack rolls. The techie is probably going to get frustrated being the engineer and the computer user, and so forth and so on.

You should at all costs avoid situations wherein one player's protagonism has become subordinated to another's. This is what happens when the group is shoehorned into "man the stations on the space transport" and there's so many that they wind up manning posts which are better left to NPCs.

The difficulty I'm having is challenging the PCs at higher levels (13+ or so) - using lots of level 10 stormtroopers (or the equivalent) is a bit over the top. My players always talk about boarding a Star Destroyer, but I've convinced them that that's A Reallly Bad Idea (because I have some nasty ideas how to handle that situation, even with low-level opponents).

Use Squads of Stormtroopers (the Squad rules are, IIRC, in the Clone Wars book.) Make Squads of Squads, and even Squads^3 to represent an entire formation of stormtroopers facing off with them in the giant cavernous bays found in Imperial settings. Use Dark Troopers, use AT-ATs and other vehicles. Use Dark-sided lightsaber wielders aligned with the Imperial forces - during the Emperor's reign, these will be Inquisitors, afterwords they'll be random dark Jedi like Desann's or Tavion's stooges, or the Shadow Academy idiots. Use battle droids - the Clone Wars certainly left enough of them around that the Imperials absolutely could have salvaged all they wanted from the caches the Emperor established. Players boarding a Star Destroyer during the time of the Imperial Remnant will probably be in for a rude surprise when they see a Squad^2 of Droidekas painted in Stormtrooper White and all bearing the Empire's symbol mustered against them, backed up by AT-ATs.

Throw Named NPCs at them. Wookiepedia is a gigantic mine of EU material; use it. Pick some NPCs you won't care about if they die before they're 'supposed' to, aligned with the appropriate faction (or possibly any faction, if it's say, Bossk,) and throw them at the PCs, backed up by Stormtrooper Squads and the odd Droideka.

Just remember that you should probably never have more enemy "units" on the field than, say, one a half times the number of players, at the very most. Generally, if you're ever thinking of having more than two identical enemies approach from one direction at a time, Squad them up. This can be helped immense if you make a big stat-chart or book of all the 'generic' enemy types (IE, Phase 2 Dark Trooper, Destroyer Droid, 501st Legion Stormtroopers,) then make up to Squad^2 or Squad^3 of them.

[Imperial Overlord]

And newbie Jedi in a situation where the Republic has suddenly suspended official recognition, let alone materiel and financial support, are supposed to come up with a half a squadron of X-Wings how, exactly? Well, there's always the old five-fingered discount, but finding someone who's so bad it's okay to steal from them who also keeps X-Wings and not TIE Interceptors is kind of hard.

There are plenty of tough fighters out there. Its not fucking hard. If space combat is going to be a big part of your Star Wars game, players are going to make getting decent fighters a priority. If they're not incompetent and the GM isn't a dick, it'll happen.

2) Have a god damn space transport for the rest of the team. Princess Leia doesn't have to be awesome at piloting the Millenium Falcon. That's Han Solo and Chewie's bag. There's plenty for other players to do from restoring shields to manning guns.

Have you ever tried playing that? It's awful.

Blaster cannons is my character's position during space combat. And since there's this little thing called communications, I'm intimately involved in tactics and strategy and deciding my own fate.

A decently modified space transport is far harder than a heavy fighter. Shield rating on 55 on our Citadel Class and there's still room for more pimping out. TIE fighters can barely scratch us.

3) Keep your opposition realistic. A few PCs aren't going to beat a Star Destroyer without serious back up, but a pack of TIEs is a different matter.

Um... Rogue Squadron and Wraith Squadron repeatedly perform this kind of stunt. Their "back-up" generally consists of sacrificial B-Wings to draw fire from them and pound down the shields.

If your PCs are all as good and as numerous as Rogue Squadron and have serious back up then they can go for it. But since
1) Rogue Squadron is 12 dudes and adventuring parties are usually smaller

2) Rogue Squadron are some of the galaxy's best pilots

3) they don't do it solo

4) Stackpole slathers his protagonists with superhuman abilities and character shields harder than the Suncrusher's armour and the players don't have quite that level of authorial wank on their side . . . .

Having said that, Rogue Squadron did help our characters dust a fuckload of TIES and an Interdictor so its not impossible. Again it comes down to managing the threat level, as I said in the first place. You don't send 5th level characters into a meat grinder for 15th level characters. This is such a basic fact that I shouldn't have to mention it, but since you're a fucking retard . . .

[Raesene]

Space combat is not a problem in Saga. You need to do a couple things:

1) Have fighter pilots in relatively tough fighters, one that can't be one shot killed by typical antifighter weaponry. X-wings and the like. This minimizes death to bad luck.

And newbie Jedi in a situation where the Republic has suddenly suspended official recognition, let alone materiel and financial support, are supposed to come up with a half a squadron of X-Wings how, exactly? Well, there's always the old five-fingered discount, but finding someone who's so bad it's okay to steal from them who also keeps X-Wings and not TIE Interceptors is kind of hard.

2) Have a god damn space transport for the rest of the team. Princess Leia doesn't have to be awesome at piloting the Millenium Falcon. That's Han Solo and Chewie's bag. There's plenty for other players to do from restoring shields to manning guns.

Have you ever tried playing that? It's awful.
First off, to effectively man the guns, you have to have Weapon Group Proficiency (Heavy). Now, I don't know about you, but I've never seen any evidence that Luke or Leia - or hell, even Chewbacca or Han - were the kind of person capable of shouldering a rocket launcher and blowing up Imperial Walkers.

Second off, it completely deprotagonizes the players to have them manning stations on someone else's ship. A starfighter pilot is the captain of his own fate; he may be technically taking orders, but he can always point his X-Wing third star to the left and hyperspace straight on till morning; more importantly, he chooses where he's going, what he's doing, whose ass will be being vaporized next round, and so forth and so on. It's him and his astromech, alone in a tiny flying box bristling with guns and thermonuclear torpedoes, against the great beyond

But when you're in the transport and you're not the guy no stick? You have no control over where you go. He points that stick somewhere, and you have two choices: go along for the ride, or make a run for the escape pods. If you're a gunner, you have at least the protagonist of choosing whose ass to blow out of the sky, but if the captain (usually the guy on stick) is also giving you orders on that regards ("Shoot the fighter on the left!") and you decide it's better to do something else, you can (and will) catch shit from another player, in-character and probably out of it, for disobeying the skipper's orders.

It's worse if you're the engineer or the guy sitting in the copilot's seat. The engineer's job is solely "roll mechanics to fix the things that blow up, and if everything is hunky-dory, roll mechanics to make something better for a short period of time." The guy in the copilot's seat is pretty much limited to sensor jamming and other Computer Use rolls.

And worse, Space Transports have very little hit points, in some cases there are heavy starfighters with more HP than your average YT-series! One high roll with a proton torpedo and BOOM! That's everybody on that space transport facing the damage of the exploding ship, and vacuum.


Let's review. Putting the players in a space transport means only the pilot and maybe gunners get to do anything fun, the rest are just being skill bitches for the Captain's grand plan and/or keeping everyone alive. There's another word for "a player's skill bitch" - oh right, NPC. It also poses a huge risk of a lot of players dying at once.

I resolved this by giving the players a bunch of starfighters and a space transport. They flew the starfighters and the space transport like they were always on a strike mission, taking relief breaks for leg-jumps on the transport as needed and transferring back to their fighters before jumping to the destination. The transport itself had maneouvering jets, a set of guns under the pilot's control, and a quadlaser under the gunner's control - in space combat, it behaved very much like a very big, beefy if inelegant two-man starfighter.

3) Keep your opposition realistic. A few PCs aren't going to beat a Star Destroyer without serious back up, but a pack of TIEs is a different matter.

Um... Rogue Squadron and Wraith Squadron repeatedly perform this kind of stunt. Their "back-up" generally consists of sacrificial B-Wings to draw fire from them and pound down the shields.

Rogue and Wraith Squadron are the Elite of the New Republic, their players surely invested into things like heavy weapon proficiency and a few related talents as well as vehicular combat and starship maneuvers. Most of the things the Wraiths do can be performed by simply being trained in one or two skills; Stealth, Use Computer, Mechanics or Treat Injury come to my mind. Some of those are even helpful for a pilot.

Regarding Play, players should know what to expect (in general) and build their characters accordingly, or voice their character concepts and you as GM build the campaign accordingly. You're basically assuming every player will want to play the Han Solo character, but nobody a Chewbacca. That may be the case in your campaign, but not in a lot of others. It's similar for the Sniper/Assassin character in my group: he will not take center stage in every encounter, but sometimes he has his moments. A soldier focussed on heavy weapon might cause trouble when the party has to sneak into an enemy base without being detected, and so on.

It's nomal that some kinds of encounters favour certain charater types, it's the responsibility of the GM to keep it in balance so that every player has the chance to use his or her character's strengths.

In summary: Adjust the Campaign to the wishes of the Players, and you will have fun. Don't, and you'll soon sit alone at the table.

[Edward Yee]

Will have to take a look at GaW and GoI... I wouldn't say that I'm a fan of the Challenge Code rankings back in "Star Wars d20 Revised," but one thing I found is that the CL system could very much be off/incongruous with regards to nonheroic NPCs.

As an example, I did a Revised-to-Saga conversion of the hazard trooper (Internet Wayback Machine has the Revised hazard and rocket troopers here), where I used a 1:1 class level conversion, so they had 14 nonheroic levels... because CL for nonheroic levels is "divide nonheroic levels by 3" though, they were CL 4 -- thus considered equal to a 4th-level PC. Unless you've got someone spec'd for attacking Will Defense, is bullshit. (It doesn't help that due to my "half-of-die+1" method, they had 70 hp.)

Admittedly some of the practical difficulty would be due to the armor (increased damage Threshold, +11 armor, the helmet package and acid/lava/temperature immunities), but his levels mean an inordinately high bonus to attack rolls, on average +9 (braced autofire, braced Burst Fire, or Rapid Shot) and no lower than +6 (regular autofire or Burst Fire). Skills-wise those high levels mean plus good Initiative and Perception considering his lack of heroic levels, Dexterity/Wisdom modifiers or even skill training in them. If Endurance and Knowledge (tactics) are used in an encounter, he's even better in that respect. Hell, if you somehow manage to take his weapon away, he can at least melee -- unarmed, not trained in Martial Arts (so only a d4), and with only his Strength (in fairness +4) going for him... but that's at +14 to hit.

[Raesene]

Will have to take a look at GaW and GoI... I wouldn't say that I'm a fan of the Challenge Code rankings back in "Star Wars d20 Revised," but one thing I found is that the CL system could very much be off/incongruous with regards to nonheroic NPCs.

As an example, I did a Revised-to-Saga conversion of the hazard trooper (Internet Wayback Machine has the Revised hazard and rocket troopers here), where I used a 1:1 class level conversion, so they had 14 nonheroic levels... because CL for nonheroic levels is "divide nonheroic levels by 3" though, they were CL 4 -- thus considered equal to a 4th-level PC. Unless you've got someone spec'd for attacking Will Defense, is bullshit. (It doesn't help that due to my "half-of-die+1" method, they had 70 hp.)

Admittedly some of the practical difficulty would be due to the armor (increased damage Threshold, +11 armor, the helmet package and acid/lava/temperature immunities), but his levels mean an inordinately high bonus to attack rolls, on average +9 (braced autofire, braced Burst Fire, or Rapid Shot) and no lower than +6 (regular autofire or Burst Fire). Skills-wise those high levels mean plus good Initiative and Perception considering his lack of heroic levels, Dexterity/Wisdom modifiers or even skill training in them. If Endurance and Knowledge (tactics) are used in an encounter, he's even better in that respect. Hell, if you somehow manage to take his weapon away, he can at least melee -- unarmed, not trained in Martial Arts (so only a d4), and with only his Strength (in fairness +4) going for him... but that's at +14 to hit.

I'd consider one of those a good, hard opponent for a group of level four characters, and several of those could even put up a fight against higher-level heroes. A Reflex Defense of about 20 will be a challenge to level 4 characters, but can teach them the value of using aid another or other boosting effects, like the noble's Born Leader- or Coordinate-talent. Your trooper will also have a lot less skills than a heroic character. ot every encounter should be a piece of cake, swome fights can be fights, also for the heroes.

The challenge levels provided in the core rulebook are good for low-level characters, but at moderate levels a DC of 15 or 20 (after a few levels, skill focus and a a decent ability modifier) is not a challenge anymore. So the bad guys got an upgrade to their firewall compared to a few levels ago to preotect crtitical data, or better locks on their doors, more perceptive security droids and so on.

[Serafina]

Wait, is Shadowdragon complaining that not ever character is a super-pilot?

What the hell is wrong with that guy? When talking about space-ships, having multiple stations is part of the concept. There are whole game systems build aroung that idea (Traveler, Rogue Trader etc.)

You have the guy who can make quick repairs. You have the guy who can fly the ship. You have the guy who can use the weapons. You have the guy who mans the tech systems. You have the guy who coordinates it all.
Every character class in the SAGA edition can fill one of these roles or even several ones. All of these roles can be a lot of fun.
That's why you should actually NOT use fighters unless you are going for a very space-heavy campaign where everyone has some good piloting skills. A single pilot in a fighter is ok, but other than that the typical adventuring group should use a space transport. If you actually man all stations, those things are beasts (just look at the Falcon in RotJ or ANH, it easily beats dozens of fighters). And everyone can play an important role.

[Edward Yee]

Personally I'm inclined to bump up the stormies to CL 2 (nonheroic 6... it's already used enough by other "generic mooks," so +1 to skills and attacks, more hp, and a 6th-level feat) and have the Imperial Army as the CL 1 mooks.

Obviously the hazard trooper will have fewer skills (I chose Endurance and Knowledge [tactics] as his trained skills), but it's up to the GM's encounter design to determine whether that's actually relevant. The only "straight up combat" weaknesses in the original Saga build (see below) build that I see are due to feat selection; in the Revised build he had blaster pistols, blaster rifles, and heavy weapons proficiency; in the Saga build I originally converted to I swapped pistols for simple weapons so that he could throw melee attacks (not proficient in unarmed? really??) and hand grenades.

After going over it again, I've replaced Rapid Shot with pistols proficiency, which I've found does nerf the trooper I think -- now he has "full" ranged weapon proficiencies, but with the default weapon he's limited to either bracing (thus not moving/attacking in the same round) for +9 to hit, or moving/drawing and attacking at +6 to hit, whether as an area attack (autofire) or at a single target (Burst Fire). If he's wielding a pistol or rifle (except for the light repeating blaster) then he attacks at +11 to hit but "only" for 3d6/3d8. With Rapid Shot, he would still have been able to move and attack in the same round at +9 to hit against a single target with any ranged weapon; I've been treating it as not restricted to semiauto-capable weapons, whereas Burst Fire requires autofire mode.

Thanks for the mental stimulation.

[Vehrec]

I think this quote shall sum up the fundamental problem.

The players should never be in actual risk of danger of losing a character (barring a ridiculous rolling situation,) they should just feel like they're in danger of dying. The reason for this is simple: if they don't feel like they're in danger of dying, they won't feel as challenged and exhilarated, but owing to the nature of statistics, if you put them in actual danger of dying, sooner or later they will die. And it's really rather frustrating and ultimately, game-damaging, if that happens, but most especially when it happens to a not particularly consequential character.

The question here is, Why should the players feel that they're in danger of dying...if they aren't? If the RNG isn't going to force someone to tear up their sheet some of the time, something's wrong with the game. I won't deny that it's a bad thing to have happen to a player in some ways, but my circle of players aren't idiots. They KNOW when they're in danger, when they're not, and adapt accordingly. When they're in danger, they play things more conservatively, or more aggressively when they know that nobody's going to stop them. And if they are never in actual risk of losing a character, then they are going to be aggressive, maybe recklessly so. They can do the math as well as the man behind the screen, so they can TELL when they're being genuinely challenged.

Certainly, an encounter where two of the party bite it in order to spirit away a Sith artifact will be, all things being equal, more memorable and leave a bigger impression than the exact same encounter where nobody dies. I know this, because seven years ago I played a game of D&D and all i can remember about it is the night we lost two guys-one to his own reckless actions, and the other as part of his secret long-running plot to betray us. Not every fight should be an easy win, or winnable in the way you expect. We only managed to pull off a 'win' in that case I mentioned because the betrayal went off without us being able to stop him. I think that may be the single thing for which I most respect my brother's Roleplaying skills.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Wait, is Shadowdragon complaining that not ever character is a super-pilot?

What the hell is wrong with that guy? When talking about space-ships, having multiple stations is part of the concept. There are whole game systems build aroung that idea (Traveler, Rogue Trader etc.)

You have the guy who can make quick repairs. You have the guy who can fly the ship. You have the guy who can use the weapons. You have the guy who mans the tech systems. You have the guy who coordinates it all.
Every character class in the SAGA edition can fill one of these roles or even several ones. All of these roles can be a lot of fun.
That's why you should actually NOT use fighters unless you are going for a very space-heavy campaign where everyone has some good piloting skills. A single pilot in a fighter is ok, but other than that the typical adventuring group should use a space transport. If you actually man all stations, those things are beasts (just look at the Falcon in RotJ or ANH, it easily beats dozens of fighters). And everyone can play an important role.

Serafina, I have the feeling you're talking from impression rather than experience. I am speaking from experience.

Space combat with a single space transport loaded with PCs, alone against some TIEs, tends to go a lot like... Well, let's join the battle, already in progress, assuming a party of unnamed PCs who for whatever reason are flying around in the Falcon.
Player 1 (Captain): "I fly the ship *here* so my gunners can get a good lock on *this guy, and this guy*, and I'm going to launch one of the concussion missiles at *third guy* here. *rolls, blows up a TIE*
Player 2: (Gunner 1): "I'll shoot the guy the captain pointed out for me." *Rolls, blows up a TIE.*
Player 3: (Gunner 2): "Likewise." *Rolls, blows up a tie.*
Player 4: (Technician): "Um... Restore shields, I guess. Just like the last five times. *Rolls, restores 5 shield rating.*
Player 5: (Noble): "Um... I've already blown all my Noble talents earlier in the fight. GM, will you let me use the sensors to give the gunners Aid Another?"
GM: "Eh... Sure, why not. You can only paint one target at a time, though they'll both have the bonus to hit (and so will the captain, for that matter) if they target the same guy."
Player 5: "Alright. Um, how much longer until we can hyperspace out of here?"
GM: "At this rate... Hold on a moment, let me roll your astromech's Repair to fix the navicomp, then his Use Computer to plot the hyperspace course." *Rolls.* "Three more rounds. You're almost out of TIE range, too."
Player 5: "Wonderful. I'm gonna go get something to eat, be back in a bit. My character just keeps painting the nearest guy with the sensors."
Player 4: "I'll go with you, let me get my coat. My guy will keep restoring shields unless something critical fucks up or the captain tells me to do something else. My Repair bonus is +8, and my Computer Use is +13. If the ship is in danger of losing shields I'll spend FP, and if things go seriously south spend a DP for me to get out alive."
Player 5 (On the way out the door): "What he said!"

Are you starting to see the problem now? In movies, in TV shows, in Firefly, it's dramatic. Kaylee is down in the engine room doing things, but in the RPG, around the table, all she's doing is making the same roll over and over again, whilst Malcolm and Wash are doing the important things. And that's in the actual Serenity RPG, it's somewhat worse in the Star Wars RPG.

That's why those positions rightly belong to NPCs, and PCs, the protagonists of the story, should have the power of protagonism that comes with having one's own ship to fly where one will and shoot up what one wishes to shoot with it. If some of them like playing gunners more than flying, that's okay - that's what Y-Wings and quadlaser gunwells are for, after all - but you shouldn't cram utter, repetitive, uninvolved die-rolling onto a PC.

I think this quote shall sum up the fundamental problem.

The players should never be in actual risk of danger of losing a character (barring a ridiculous rolling situation,) they should just feel like they're in danger of dying. The reason for this is simple: if they don't feel like they're in danger of dying, they won't feel as challenged and exhilarated, but owing to the nature of statistics, if you put them in actual danger of dying, sooner or later they will die. And it's really rather frustrating and ultimately, game-damaging, if that happens, but most especially when it happens to a not particularly consequential character.

The question here is, Why should the players feel that they're in danger of dying...if they aren't? If the RNG isn't going to force someone to tear up their sheet some of the time, something's wrong with the game. I won't deny that it's a bad thing to have happen to a player in some ways, but my circle of players aren't idiots. They KNOW when they're in danger, when they're not, and adapt accordingly. When they're in danger, they play things more conservatively, or more aggressively when they know that nobody's going to stop them. And if they are never in actual risk of losing a character, then they are going to be aggressive, maybe recklessly so. They can do the math as well as the man behind the screen, so they can TELL when they're being genuinely challenged.

You ever gone to a magic show? You know there's no magic, it's all legerdemain, slight of hand and distraction. But even knowing that intellectually, if you just let go and enjoy the show, you'll have a blast.

I trust the players not to anal-analyze the statistics and figure out that I'm doing my best to fly things just under the point where a player dying becomes a statistical inevitability, and they trust me not to make enemies pansies, nor to make them murderously difficult.

Also, NPCs are always fair game, and there's more at stake than the PC's own personal lives. Just because they survive doesn't mean they accomplished their mission, or that the bad guys didn't massively get the better of them and leave them frustrated and looking for payback.

Certainly, an encounter where two of the party bite it in order to spirit away a Sith artifact will be, all things being equal, more memorable and leave a bigger impression than the exact same encounter where nobody dies. I know this, because seven years ago I played a game of D&D and all i can remember about it is the night we lost two guys-one to his own reckless actions, and the other as part of his secret long-running plot to betray us. Not every fight should be an easy win, or winnable in the way you expect. We only managed to pull off a 'win' in that case I mentioned because the betrayal went off without us being able to stop him. I think that may be the single thing for which I most respect my brother's Roleplaying skills.

And a baseball game wherein the would-be catcher gets brained by the ball and knocked out, thus ensuring a full sweep for the opposing team, will be memorable and leave an impression (literally,) but that doesn't mean the catcher's having a ball (figuratively) with it. In fact, it tends to cause Suck and Fail, two things unacceptable in a game.

[Norade]

Wait, is Shadowdragon complaining that not ever character is a super-pilot?

What the hell is wrong with that guy? When talking about space-ships, having multiple stations is part of the concept. There are whole game systems build aroung that idea (Traveler, Rogue Trader etc.)

You have the guy who can make quick repairs. You have the guy who can fly the ship. You have the guy who can use the weapons. You have the guy who mans the tech systems. You have the guy who coordinates it all.
Every character class in the SAGA edition can fill one of these roles or even several ones. All of these roles can be a lot of fun.
That's why you should actually NOT use fighters unless you are going for a very space-heavy campaign where everyone has some good piloting skills. A single pilot in a fighter is ok, but other than that the typical adventuring group should use a space transport. If you actually man all stations, those things are beasts (just look at the Falcon in RotJ or ANH, it easily beats dozens of fighters). And everyone can play an important role.

Serafina, I have the feeling you're talking from impression rather than experience. I am speaking from experience.

Space combat with a single space transport loaded with PCs, alone against some TIEs, tends to go a lot like... Well, let's join the battle, already in progress, assuming a party of unnamed PCs who for whatever reason are flying around in the Falcon.
Player 1 (Captain): "I fly the ship *here* so my gunners can get a good lock on *this guy, and this guy*, and I'm going to launch one of the concussion missiles at *third guy* here. *rolls, blows up a TIE*
Player 2: (Gunner 1): "I'll shoot the guy the captain pointed out for me." *Rolls, blows up a TIE.*
Player 3: (Gunner 2): "Likewise." *Rolls, blows up a tie.*
Player 4: (Technician): "Um... Restore shields, I guess. Just like the last five times. *Rolls, restores 5 shield rating.*
Player 5: (Noble): "Um... I've already blown all my Noble talents earlier in the fight. GM, will you let me use the sensors to give the gunners Aid Another?"
GM: "Eh... Sure, why not. You can only paint one target at a time, though they'll both have the bonus to hit (and so will the captain, for that matter) if they target the same guy."
Player 5: "Alright. Um, how much longer until we can hyperspace out of here?"
GM: "At this rate... Hold on a moment, let me roll your astromech's Repair to fix the navicomp, then his Use Computer to plot the hyperspace course." *Rolls.* "Three more rounds. You're almost out of TIE range, too."
Player 5: "Wonderful. I'm gonna go get something to eat, be back in a bit. My character just keeps painting the nearest guy with the sensors."
Player 4: "I'll go with you, let me get my coat. My guy will keep restoring shields unless something critical fucks up or the captain tells me to do something else. My Repair bonus is +8, and my Computer Use is +13. If the ship is in danger of losing shields I'll spend FP, and if things go seriously south spend a DP for me to get out alive."
Player 5 (On the way out the door): "What he said!"

Are you starting to see the problem now? In movies, in TV shows, in Firefly, it's dramatic. Kaylee is down in the engine room doing things, but in the RPG, around the table, all she's doing is making the same roll over and over again, whilst Malcolm and Wash are doing the important things. And that's in the actual Serenity RPG, it's somewhat worse in the Star Wars RPG.

That's why those positions rightly belong to NPCs, and PCs, the protagonists of the story, should have the power of protagonism that comes with having one's own ship to fly where one will and shoot up what one wishes to shoot with it. If some of them like playing gunners more than flying, that's okay - that's what Y-Wings and quadlaser gunwells are for, after all - but you shouldn't cram utter, repetitive, uninvolved die-rolling onto a PC.

So what you're saying is that you fail as a GM at least as hard as you fail at everything else. It's your job to ensure that every PC feels as if they're doing something even if all they're doing is rolling a single die each turn. You supply the sparks and the power fluctuations, the shields redlining and so on. It sounds like because you think all the emphasis is on combat that you spend more time describing that than you do the workings of the sensor station or the exact issues in engineering. If you did that your players might not get up to leave each time the get the 'boring' parts.

The question here is, Why should the players feel that they're in danger of dying...if they aren't? If the RNG isn't going to force someone to tear up their sheet some of the time, something's wrong with the game. I won't deny that it's a bad thing to have happen to a player in some ways, but my circle of players aren't idiots. They KNOW when they're in danger, when they're not, and adapt accordingly. When they're in danger, they play things more conservatively, or more aggressively when they know that nobody's going to stop them. And if they are never in actual risk of losing a character, then they are going to be aggressive, maybe recklessly so. They can do the math as well as the man behind the screen, so they can TELL when they're being genuinely challenged.

You ever gone to a magic show? You know there's no magic, it's all legerdemain, slight of hand and distraction. But even knowing that intellectually, if you just let go and enjoy the show, you'll have a blast.

I trust the players not to anal-analyze the statistics and figure out that I'm doing my best to fly things just under the point where a player dying becomes a statistical inevitability, and they trust me not to make enemies pansies, nor to make them murderously difficult.

Also, NPCs are always fair game, and there's more at stake than the PC's own personal lives. Just because they survive doesn't mean they accomplished their mission, or that the bad guys didn't massively get the better of them and leave them frustrated and looking for payback.

Sounds like you run a real carebear game where the PC's no that baring some major idiocy they're never going to be in any real danger of dying. Frankly, that's a shitty game and one that I'd have no interest in playing. In my games I have players bitching that I had an NPC save a character that should have died, and all I can do is tell them that it's hard for me to get a new character into the game when they're in the middle of the ocean so I had to get creative in how I saved them. That doesn't mean nobody dies in my games, I've killed more than my share of PC's just as they've walked through a few encounters that I figured would take longer and be more of a challenge.

Certainly, an encounter where two of the party bite it in order to spirit away a Sith artifact will be, all things being equal, more memorable and leave a bigger impression than the exact same encounter where nobody dies. I know this, because seven years ago I played a game of D&D and all i can remember about it is the night we lost two guys-one to his own reckless actions, and the other as part of his secret long-running plot to betray us. Not every fight should be an easy win, or winnable in the way you expect. We only managed to pull off a 'win' in that case I mentioned because the betrayal went off without us being able to stop him. I think that may be the single thing for which I most respect my brother's Roleplaying skills.

And a baseball game wherein the would-be catcher gets brained by the ball and knocked out, thus ensuring a full sweep for the opposing team, will be memorable and leave an impression (literally,) but that doesn't mean the catcher's having a ball (figuratively) with it. In fact, it tends to cause Suck and Fail, two things unacceptable in a game.

Wow, you must be the most boring GM/player around if you think that players dying at the climax of the adventure makes it suck. If it's done right, and the players feel like that had a chance if they'd made that choice, brought that NPC along, had a bit more luck; then it works especially if a lone PC wins the day and gives a promise that he'll revive them.

[Imperial Overlord]

In the end, having a PC competent at space combat is fairly simple. The Vehicle Combat feet allows you to make a good fighter pilot. Extra feats and talents will make you even harder, but aren't necessary unless you want to specialize. Heavy Weapons makes you a good gunner, and since it grants proficiency with all vehicle weapons from the Falcon's guns to AT-ST walker weapons as well as allowing the badass grenade launcher concussion grenade combo, is an excellent investment for soldier types. Other skills have applications. Anyone can have good ideas for tactics, targeting, or maneuvering so talk. That's it. Destiny and Force Points give you an edge when it comes to survivability and a modded space transport or tough fighter gives you even more margin.

[Stofsk]

The idea that players should not be at actual risk of losing their characters is fucking stupid.

In the end, having a PC competent at space combat is fairly simple. The Vehicle Combat feet allows you to make a good fighter pilot. Extra feats and talents will make you even harder, but aren't necessary unless you want to specialize. Heavy Weapons makes you a good gunner, and since it grants proficiency with all vehicle weapons from the Falcon's guns to AT-ST walker weapons as well as allowing the badass grenade launcher concussion grenade combo, is an excellent investment for soldier types. Other skills have applications. Anyone can have good ideas for tactics, targeting, or maneuvering so talk. That's it. Destiny and Force Points give you an edge when it comes to survivability and a modded space transport or tough fighter gives you even more margin.

QFT. In addition, there are feats that overlap in both combat arenas. Rapid Shot works with a sidearm as well as inside the cockpit. So does Precise Shot, and Far Shot. Hell the latter of which is even more useful in space combat than it is in ground combat!

I have a soldier who is easily the best pilot in the group, and flies an x-wing, but he's just as capable on the ground than most in the party is.

[Imperial Overlord]

As a side note, you get a lot of feats in Saga. By 7th level a human has 7 feats. Investing one or two to be badass in space isn't that big a deal.

I have a soldier who is easily the best pilot in the group, and flies an x-wing, but he's just as capable on the ground than most in the party is.

As someone who has seen you in action, you're fucking disgusting in space and pretty hardcore on the ground.

For a mammal.

[Stofsk]

And for some reason, I have yet to be promoted to Badass Motherfucker of the Fleet yet...

And Shards is the best on the ground, I'll give him that. At least he doesn't get drunk and jumped by bounty hunters. (I love it how the pseudoJedi of our group reaction was 'holy shit cast surge now imma gtf away from here lol')

[Imperial Overlord]

At least he doesn't get drunk and jumped by bounty hunters. (I love it how the pseudoJedi of our group reaction was 'holy shit cast surge now imma gtf away from here lol')

Look, he needs to do something between hitting on other men's wives and being less hard than you in space.

[yoda] Game mechanics alone a Jedi make not. [/yoda]

[Vehrec]

Wait, is Shadowdragon complaining that not ever character is a super-pilot?

What the hell is wrong with that guy? When talking about space-ships, having multiple stations is part of the concept. There are whole game systems build aroung that idea (Traveler, Rogue Trader etc.)

You have the guy who can make quick repairs. You have the guy who can fly the ship. You have the guy who can use the weapons. You have the guy who mans the tech systems. You have the guy who coordinates it all.
Every character class in the SAGA edition can fill one of these roles or even several ones. All of these roles can be a lot of fun.
That's why you should actually NOT use fighters unless you are going for a very space-heavy campaign where everyone has some good piloting skills. A single pilot in a fighter is ok, but other than that the typical adventuring group should use a space transport. If you actually man all stations, those things are beasts (just look at the Falcon in RotJ or ANH, it easily beats dozens of fighters). And everyone can play an important role.

Serafina, I have the feeling you're talking from impression rather than experience. I am speaking from experience.

Space combat with a single space transport loaded with PCs, alone against some TIEs, tends to go a lot like... Well, let's join the battle, already in progress, assuming a party of unnamed PCs who for whatever reason are flying around in the Falcon.
Player 1 (Captain): "I fly the ship *here* so my gunners can get a good lock on *this guy, and this guy*, and I'm going to launch one of the concussion missiles at *third guy* here. *rolls, blows up a TIE*
Player 2: (Gunner 1): "I'll shoot the guy the captain pointed out for me." *Rolls, blows up a TIE.*
Player 3: (Gunner 2): "Likewise." *Rolls, blows up a tie.*
Player 4: (Technician): "Um... Restore shields, I guess. Just like the last five times. *Rolls, restores 5 shield rating.*
Player 5: (Noble): "Um... I've already blown all my Noble talents earlier in the fight. GM, will you let me use the sensors to give the gunners Aid Another?"
GM: "Eh... Sure, why not. You can only paint one target at a time, though they'll both have the bonus to hit (and so will the captain, for that matter) if they target the same guy."
Player 5: "Alright. Um, how much longer until we can hyperspace out of here?"
GM: "At this rate... Hold on a moment, let me roll your astromech's Repair to fix the navicomp, then his Use Computer to plot the hyperspace course." *Rolls.* "Three more rounds. You're almost out of TIE range, too."
Player 5: "Wonderful. I'm gonna go get something to eat, be back in a bit. My character just keeps painting the nearest guy with the sensors."
Player 4: "I'll go with you, let me get my coat. My guy will keep restoring shields unless something critical fucks up or the captain tells me to do something else. My Repair bonus is +8, and my Computer Use is +13. If the ship is in danger of losing shields I'll spend FP, and if things go seriously south spend a DP for me to get out alive."
Player 5 (On the way out the door): "What he said!"

Are you starting to see the problem now? In movies, in TV shows, in Firefly, it's dramatic. Kaylee is down in the engine room doing things, but in the RPG, around the table, all she's doing is making the same roll over and over again, whilst Malcolm and Wash are doing the important things. And that's in the actual Serenity RPG, it's somewhat worse in the Star Wars RPG.

That's why those positions rightly belong to NPCs, and PCs, the protagonists of the story, should have the power of protagonism that comes with having one's own ship to fly where one will and shoot up what one wishes to shoot with it. If some of them like playing gunners more than flying, that's okay - that's what Y-Wings and quadlaser gunwells are for, after all - but you shouldn't cram utter, repetitive, uninvolved die-rolling onto a PC.

Utter, repetitive, uninvolved die-rolling is how I would characterize any action in a baddly run game. Let's explore an alternate space-transport fight...

GM: Ok, let's keep going. Jake, it's your turn.
Jake (aka, player 4): Right. Jamming coms again, to keep these guys from telling on us.(rolls a 2) Ahh...shit.
GM: That's still a 16, you freaky munchkin droid.(begins rolling for Tie pilots to break through the jamming.) ...And the dice are not loving you guys tonight. Also, TIE pilot number six will be getting a transfer to the SWACS group when they see how good he is at this.
Jake: Damnit.
Player Five: Well, so they know we're here now?
GM: Encrypted transmitions, you can't tell what they know. But that would seem to be a safe bet.
Player Five: Then the insertion's a bust. We've gotta get out of here, and try to come in from a different angle.
Player One: Mandy, are you suggesting a different literal angle or a different angle to our cover story.
Mandy(player 5): Both? Look, we can't stay around here for long.
Player One: Ok, allright. Jake, can you plot a hyperspace course?
Jake(drowning his sorrows in Mountain Dew):Ngah. I dunno, can I?
GM: (ponders for a few seconds) Make another Computer Use check. At -5, since you already made one this turn.
Jake: Alright. Similar but not an identical course to our entry, since we're 5 turns away from that point. (rolls a 18) Huh. Ok, that's 27 big man.
GM: 27 will do fine. Andy, you just have to turn the ship around and hold a steady course while Jake's character finalizes the course.
Player 3. Hold a steady course? With Ties up our asses?
Player 2. Hey man, I dunno about you, but I'm all for the steady course. We can shoot straighter if he isn't bobbing and weaving all over the map.

See, everyone can be involved in thinking and doing things on one ship. Because the players are not just a horde of like minded protagonists, they're supposed to be a team. With actual cooperation. And the ability to take a secondary or supporting role, if that's what the situation calls for. If I put a sewage grate into the base 20 feet off the ground and the players use a lifeform pyramid to reach it instead of each having their own grappling hooks, that's awesome.

I think this quote shall sum up the fundamental problem.

The players should never be in actual risk of danger of losing a character (barring a ridiculous rolling situation,) they should just feel like they're in danger of dying. The reason for this is simple: if they don't feel like they're in danger of dying, they won't feel as challenged and exhilarated, but owing to the nature of statistics, if you put them in actual danger of dying, sooner or later they will die. And it's really rather frustrating and ultimately, game-damaging, if that happens, but most especially when it happens to a not particularly consequential character.

The question here is, Why should the players feel that they're in danger of dying...if they aren't? If the RNG isn't going to force someone to tear up their sheet some of the time, something's wrong with the game. I won't deny that it's a bad thing to have happen to a player in some ways, but my circle of players aren't idiots. They KNOW when they're in danger, when they're not, and adapt accordingly. When they're in danger, they play things more conservatively, or more aggressively when they know that nobody's going to stop them. And if they are never in actual risk of losing a character, then they are going to be aggressive, maybe recklessly so. They can do the math as well as the man behind the screen, so they can TELL when they're being genuinely challenged.

You ever gone to a magic show? You know there's no magic, it's all legerdemain, slight of hand and distraction. But even knowing that intellectually, if you just let go and enjoy the show, you'll have a blast.

I trust the players not to anal-analyze the statistics and figure out that I'm doing my best to fly things just under the point where a player dying becomes a statistical inevitability, and they trust me not to make enemies pansies, nor to make them murderously difficult.

Also, NPCs are always fair game, and there's more at stake than the PC's own personal lives. Just because they survive doesn't mean they accomplished their mission, or that the bad guys didn't massively get the better of them and leave them frustrated and looking for payback.

A magic trick looses its charm if you see it again. If you see it 30 times, you can probably guess what the secret is. Likewise, your players even if they don't say it, are feeling confident and in control of every situation because they know that you won't kill them. That is not to say that every adventure should end in a TPK, although even that can be satisfying if it's done right. But risk ought to be genuine. As a sign of respect, try and introduce a little genuine danger to the game.

Killing of NPCs preferentially is also IMO a bad idea. It reinforces the PC island of safety, and discourages them from getting attached to anyone since they can always depend on the GM having a hitlist of their friends who are going to die. A NPC should never be specifically targeted out of the group just because it's not a player controlled character.

Certainly, an encounter where two of the party bite it in order to spirit away a Sith artifact will be, all things being equal, more memorable and leave a bigger impression than the exact same encounter where nobody dies. I know this, because seven years ago I played a game of D&D and all i can remember about it is the night we lost two guys-one to his own reckless actions, and the other as part of his secret long-running plot to betray us. Not every fight should be an easy win, or winnable in the way you expect. We only managed to pull off a 'win' in that case I mentioned because the betrayal went off without us being able to stop him. I think that may be the single thing for which I most respect my brother's Roleplaying skills.

And a baseball game wherein the would-be catcher gets brained by the ball and knocked out, thus ensuring a full sweep for the opposing team, will be memorable and leave an impression (literally,) but that doesn't mean the catcher's having a ball (figuratively) with it. In fact, it tends to cause Suck and Fail, two things unacceptable in a game.

I'm sorry. Are you saying that my enjoyment of the events described above was wrong somehow? That I could not have had as much fun and excitement as I thought I did? Because it seems to me that you're implying that PC death, in any situation, is a bad thing and should never happen. And that nobody can have any fun in a situation where death of PCs is possible. Is that REALLY what you want to say? There is no better and more direct way to demonstrate that shit has just got real, that the enemy is actually a threat, that the Players are in over their heads. Than to directly attack their HP.

[Jaevric]

I seldom ran game campaigns and played D&D not Star Wars, but I'd say as a player that very few things ruined the experience as much as realizing the DM would do everything in his power to prevent our characters from dying. For one thing, it tended to turn every battle into a frontal assault. For another, it encouraged a level of player stupidity that was embarassing for the rest of us because once some people realized they literally could not be killed, they started doing any stupid shit they felt like and expecting the DM to clean up after them. To make matters worse, the DM started giving out better and better gear to the idiots to make it easier for them to survive their own stupidity.

If players know their characters can die, it encourages them to use clever tactics and think before putting themselves in a bad situation. Especially in high-level campaigns, when characters (and players) start getting arrogant about how awesome they are, a genuine "Oh shit, I think we may be in trouble" moment adds a lot to the game.

[Serafina]

Okay, Shadowdragon - you SUCK as a GM.
Seriously, your combat szenario was reduced purely to dice rolls for all but one player. How stupid is that?
That's not just a problem with space combat, but with every game - you'll always have someone who doesn't do that much combat or is just a supporter.
And if you play such a character whit you as a GM, you will apparently get nothing but dry descrpition of your die rolls, while the combatants get nice descriptions and a choice from multiple actions.

Sure, you can complain that there are no rules for shield fluctuation or whatever. But if a player is SOLELY working on the shield, make some up. You are, after all, the GM. All you need to do is adding some rolls, multiple choices (choose between a percentage of the shields being useless, lowering their strenght or increasingly difficult rolls to maintain them at current strength - just quickly made up and very easy). And of course a nice description.