Saturday's game did not go according to plan, or even close. Basically, I botched the game badly (part of the reason why the game ended so early was that I realised after about an hour that it wasn't going well, so got out). And it wasn't that the players did anything to disrupt the plot - I just forgot to include one :-(
So, with that in mind, there's not a whole lot that I can say about the system, without it sounding like sour grapes. But I'm not going to let that stop me:
- Vitality Points are bizarre. You roll to hit, and as a result, your shot doesn't hit. What the hell? This makes even less sense that hit points do.
- Wound Points are worse. We had two critical hits with lightsabers in the game. The first almost killed the target in a single blow, and this despite my rolling really low damage. The second killed the bad-guy, and would have even if he had been unhurt. This just makes the "Improved Critical" feat far too powerful.
- If the goal of d20 is to make the game familiar to new users, it doesn't quite work. Force powers work fine, but they need to be read by players of Jedi before the game begins. Of course, this is really no different than Wizards in D&D, and my lack of familiarity with the rules can hardly be considered to be a flaw in the rules themselves.
- The starship rules suck. But then, we knew that.
- I really need to get myself a copy of the Revised core rulebook. The existence of both new and old books at the game table was a distraction.
Overall, I think d20 is a fairly good fit for the Star Wars setting. It has the appropriately heroic style, and lack of realism, and has nicely iconic character types. However, I'm not too sure of the specific implementation. And my feeling is that if I changed the rules to better fit what I think they should be (bring back hit points, rewrite starships again), I'd probably end up with a house-ruled mess that no-one would want to play.
At some point, I'm still intending to write up what I think the starship rules should look like. Once I've done that, I'll post them (not here, though).
Archived comment by Mort:
ReplyDeleteVitality Points and Wound points
Well the idea behind Vitality Points is decent. But it gives the GM a serious headache, as you have to roll damage before you know if the guy actually got hit or not. It makes describing combat a huge pain in the ass. Then we have Wound Points, which is also an interesting idea, but so much not Star Wars. The whole idea is that the characters are the big heroes and should be able to mow down Stormtroopers in droves. All it takes is one lucky hit by a flailing trooper and the hero is out, probably for good. (3d8 does quite a bit of damage on the average.) I think the best thing to do is to give extras wound points, and have heroes and main baddies use the vitality points (Which should be renamed to hit points to avoid further confusion.) Because if you use vitality points for things like Stormtroopers you'll end up having to shoot them three or four times before they fall down, and that's not very Star Warsish (nice word.. warshish..)
Revised Rules
Well, I shouln't have brought out the book in the first place, as it is quite different from the first set, my bad on that point.
As for the revised rules, I definately recomend them, as they are much better overall. Still the first thing I would do is the above mentioned change of vitality/wound crap and then crank up the skill points for each class. I just feel that people need more points to be able to raise all the skills which will be useful. (Like pilot and computer use.)
On the subject of computer use, why the hell did they remove the astrogation skill, it doesn't have anything to do with computers in general, it's a very different skill. I guess you could say it's like a craft or profession skill or something, but computer use... bah!
Different d20 system
On a totaly different note, after reading Mutants & Masterminds, I've seen the light. They got it all right in that game, atleast from my viewpoint and what I don't like about D&D/Star Wars d20. You get a number of points to create your character with, which can be used to buy things like BAB and Defense. To me this looks like a much more interesting system, as you can actually choose to raise skills instead of your hitting people stat, or you could just spend all your points on feats and be a big, mean ass-kicking machine. However M&M is a superhero system, so using the point buy character development in D&D or Star Wars would probably require some rework.
Archived comment by me:
ReplyDeleteRe: Vitality Points
Here's a kooky thought - if a blaster shot hits-but-doesn't-hit (you beat the Defense, but hit Vitality points rather than Wound points), why does a heavy blaster do more damage than a light blaster? Presumably, a heavy load of plasma that is dodged has much the same effect as a light load of plasma that is dodged?
So, I think I'm right that Vitality points need to go. And, since I'm taking them, I'll also take the armour as DR thing as well. Just because I can.
As for the Stormtroopers using Wound points thing, I think that's better modelled by keeping them low-level. The average Stormtrooper is a 3rd level Thug, with a Con of 11. If we give the Thug class d8 hit points per level, the average Stormtrooper will have 3d8 hit points, which means that the average heavy blaster shot (or is it blaster carbine?) will take him out (also 3d8 damage).
Ah, except that I forgot that in a hit point system all the damages are supposed to be reduced by 1 die (from Ultramodern Firearms). I'll need to think on that some more. But I'm really not a fan of having different rules for the PCs and the NPCs - their being mooks notwithstanding.
Autofire
I've remembered something else I don't like about the Star Wars system (also also Call of Cthulhu), that being the application of autofire. Sad to say, I think I prefer d20 Modern in this regard (it's an area attack - roll vs AC 10 to hit the area, and then everyone in the area must make a Ref save or take damage).
So, to sum up
I'm not totally dissatisfied with the use of d20 with Star Wars. However, I think it needs major work to be useful:
- Replace Vitality/Wound points with Hit Points.
- Re-write Force powers to cause subdual damage instead of Vitality damage (this seems to be the analogue).
- Re-do the weapon damage tables to account for the use of hit points.
- Assign hit dice to the NPC classes.
- Re-write the starship combat rules to treat snub-fighters as characters, and capital ships as single large monsters.
- Replace autofire and multifire with their equivalents in d20 Modern.
- Re-do the standard statistics for Stormtroopers, Imperial Guards, etc. to account for the change.
- Vastly expand the Species chapter to allow a much wider range of playable races. Basically, every humanoid race found in the Alien Anthology should be available as a PC race, since the Star Wars universe is very cosmopolitan.
Have I missed anything?
The problem is, once you get to this sort of level of changes, you're getting to the point where you're better off just ditching the whole thing as a bad idea - since you won't be able to use any supplements for the game without conversions, and can't talk about the game with any other players without an interpreter.
Archived comment by Mort:
ReplyDeleteStar Wars SSE
As in Star Wars Stephen Special Edition :)
Nice one with the vitality points, it is indeed logic defying that some weapons does more damage than others.
As for mook fighting, maybe something like the way Feng Shui works could be used, whereby you have to roll five or more over the target number to hit to kill them outright, so if you get some number over the AC of mook, mook goes down. Of course this would mean no damage rolls for mooks, which some players might scoff at. (The ones who like to roll-play that is.)
For the extent of the changes, I'm afraid that what happens when you change a core mechanic, especially in d20, where many things hang together in complex ways.
But such is the price for superiority.