Star Wars Revised (again)

Huh, it turns out that I really had read enough to comment sensibly - the changes to starship combat boiled down to "use a battlemap".

So, here goes:

PC Races

This could be fixed in the original by simply using the Alien Anthology supplement, but it is nice that this version has more races available.

Classes

Truth be told, I didn't have any great problems here, but the addition of the Tech Specialist class is welcome.

Armour as Damage Reduction

It's nice to see that they've made armour even less useful than it already was. Good move.

Truthfully, I don't mind armour operating as damage reduction, but it should apply to all attacks. However, this ties in to a larger rant that I'll get into below. See "Wounds/Vitality", below.

Autofire

Why, why, why did they implement this rule like this? "Take a penalty to hit, and get one or two extra attacks per round". Quality.

Autofire should be implemented as it is in d20 Modern - pick an area to effect, roll vs AC10 to hit, and everyone in the area must roll a Ref save or take damage. That's not a perfect autofire rule, but it is the best one I've seen so far under d20.

Wounds/Vitality

This system makes no sense, and makes critical hits far too deadly.

If Vitality represents a character's ability to avoid harm, turning a killing blow into a near miss, why do weapons do different amounts of Vitality damage? Also, isn't that the roll of a character's Defense score? If it represents the character's ability to roll with damage, turning a killing blow into a lesser blow, why doesn't armour apply?

Worse still, since critical hits ignore Vitality, you have to balance encounters knowing that a freak dice roll can leave a PC dead in a single round. This is fine if it's what you want, but it's really not Star Wars.

Starship Combat

This was the big problem with the original edition of the game, and has at least been fixed in this version. However, the new version still has a significant problem in that the skill of the pilot is still of minor importance in vehicle combat. Okay, they roll Pilot checks for maneuvers, and their BAB applies to weapon fire, but this just leaves characters hideously vulnerable as their Defense value is limited to that of the ship, and their 100 Vitality Points are utterly useless when the ship explodes around them.

House Rules

To whip the game into a shape I'd actually be happy running it in would require a horrible number of house rules. Since I'm really not fond of such things, this leaves me with something of a problem.

Anyway, bearing that in mind, here's what I feel I'd need to do:

Return to the hit point system. Mooks still only have hit points equal to their Constitution score (poor Stormtroopers), but other characters have hit points equal to their previous Vitality totals. All damage codes are reduced by one die (that is, 3d6 weapons become 2d6, and so on). Critical hits do double damage in all cases, and armour applies to all attacks. Unarmed attacks now do subdual damage, as does any other attack that can only do Vitality damage (I don't think there are any of these, but there we go).

Force powers now do subdual damage to a character rather than Vitality damage. This is my big worry when it comes to balancing all this - I'm afraid I may have just crippled Jedi characters.

The autofire rules from d20 modern, along with the related feats, are used here in place of the existing rules.

Starship combat needs re-done (again). This is going to be a huge change, as I've outlined in previous posts.

Essentially, on a starfighter scale, ships have hit points equal to their pilot at full health (a wounded pilot in a fresh fighter returns to full hit points in the fighter; a fresh pilot in a damaged ship would have a percentage hit point loss equal to the percentage damage of the fighter. In all cases, a character returns to their previous total when they leave the ship). The defense value of the ship would equal that of the character, with a modifier based purely on the size and maneuverability of the ship. Armour and energy shielding would act as damage reduction.

That's pretty much it. I've not yet worked out quite what place the pilot's ranks in Pilot has in all of this. Nor have I worked out the details of different ship scales. And, of course, I'd need to write new stats for every ship in existence.

It's all a mess, as you can see. However, I really don't care for the elements of the system I've discussed above, and wouldn't like to run the game without house rules.

It's a damn shame - Star Wars deserves better.