One Thing That Bugs Me

Much as I really like "Star Wars Saga Edition", there's one thing that really bugs me. In fairness to the game, it's something that was ported over directly from the "Revised Core Rulebook" (essentially, the 2nd edition of SW d20), and it's something that just about every game that features the particular element does.

Consider for a moment Red Squadron from Star Wars. We have:

• Red Leader, Garven Dreis, in an X-wing
• Red Two, Wedge Antillies, in an X-wing
• Red Three, Biggs Darklighter, in an X-wing
• Red Five, Luke Skywalker, in an X-wing
• Red Six, Jek Porkins, in an X-wing

and also Reds Four, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, and Twelve, all in X-wings. According to Wookieepedia they all have names, but since they're never named in the film I've not listed them here.

Now, if we consider one of those characters:

Luke Skywalker in an X-wing

Obviously, different games have different requirements, but in the context of a roleplaying game, and assuming Luke is the PC, which is more important: Luke, or the X-wing?

Personally, I'd argue that the answer to that is pretty clear: it's Luke. The X-wing is just a bit of equipment, no more important to the story than Lancelot's sword or Aragorn's belt.

But in Saga Edition, when Luke climbs into the X-wing, what happens is that he uses the fixed set of statistics for the X-wing, slightly modified by Luke's Pilot skill, his Base Attack Bonus, and a couple of other statistics. In the game, it is the X-wing that is by far the dominant element when determining the whole.

Crucially, Luke Skywalker in an X-wing has exactly the same number of hit points as Red Seven in his X-wing. And Red Seven is so low-level he doesn't even have a name! What this means is that the scene shown in the films just doesn't work in the game. In the film, most of the X-wings are horribly fragile - Porkins, Biggs, and all the unnamed Reds are killed with a single hit each, Red Leader and Wedge each survive a single hit (with Red Leader killed by the second), while Luke survives two hits and carries on to the target. (Presumably, Luke would have been killed by a third hit.)

In the game, the X-wings are all equally tough. Meaning that those unnamed Reds are equally likely to survive that first hit as Luke is, and Luke is actually extremely unlikely to survive two hits from the standard TIE fighter.

As far as I can see, a better approach to the problem would be to consider the X-wing to be a simple template that gets applied to a character when he steps inside - it gives a certain amount of damage reduction, a certain shield rating, various weapons, and a movement rate (and maneuverability class). That way, Red Seven, being a 1st level non-heroic character, has about 6 hit points, while Luke Skywalker, level 4 Jedi, has about 50 - it's no wonder he survives rather longer!

Unfortunately, there's rather a lot of work involved in rewriting "Starships of the Galaxy" in light of such a change, so I think I'll pass!