Star Wars

On Custom Content

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Not too long ago, Tam wrote about not being entirely beholden to the rules as written, in the context of progression speed. He was speaking mostly from a GM perspective, but as a player, it’s not unreasonable to come to the same sort of conclusions. One of the time-honored ways of doing this is via conversion. As systems come and go, things are printed that for some reason or another, don’t make the new version. Sometimes there’s a good reason for this (See: D&D 4e’s Warlord), but other times they’re just left behind (5e doesn’t have an Eberron book yet, so it doesn’t have rules for Shifters, Changelings, or Warforged, even though Warforged were in one of the playtests). If these things really interest you, it’s reasonable to make changes that make sense for whatever system you’re playing in, and run it by your GM to see if the result is reasonable. (Note: this is not a standing excuse to min-max a thing you don’t like. Expect your GM to recognize it if you make it such, and react appropriately.)

On Custom Content
Related: Since Cathar are supposed to be rarer in the Old Republic era than other times, why is it that that’s the only era that has them in the games?

…which brings me to the actual topic of this post. A while back, we were in a Star Wars campaign based on the Saga Edition ruleset. We’re looking into playing in a new campaign based on the new Fantasy Flight rules, and I want to play a character similar to (but not identical to) the one I played previously. The first problem there is that I played a Cathar, and Cathar have not yet been printed for the new edition. (If I were a betting man, I’d bet that they’ll be in the Force and Destiny sourcebook focusing on the Seeker class, when that gets printed.) But given a base to work from (the Saga Edition Cathar), and given how races are structured, I think I can come up with a reasonable approximation.

The Easy Stuff

  • Races in FF Star Wars have 6 stats, which do not correspond cleanly to the familiar d20 stats: Brawn is a sort of mix between CON and STR, and CHA is split out into Cunning and Presence. Humans have 2 in each stat, but most other races have a stat at 3 and a stat at 1, with the rest staying at 2. Saga Edition Cathar had racial bonuses of +2 DEX, -2 INT, which corresponds neatly to starting Agility and Intelligence values of 3 and 1, respectively
  • Cathar in Saga Edition also get climb and stealth as automatic career skills, but skills are (usually) handled a bit differently now. Skill bonuses are granted as a free rank, and usually only in one skill. Some races get a choice of skills, and I think that approach fits here. This would mean Cathar get a free rank in Athletics or Stealth, but still cannot train either above rank 2 during character creation.
  • It’s possible to represent the Natural Weapon: Claws as a +1 damage on Brawl attacks, with a critical rating of 3. This is taken directly from Trandoshans.

The Hard Stuff

From there things get a bit complicated. Most races in SWRPG stop at 2 bonuses, and get 100 starting XP, a Strain Threshold of 10 + Willpower, and a Wound threshold of 10 + Brawn. These numbers appear to be used mostly as a balancing mechanism for other things that the race got. Humans didn’t get much else, so they get 110 starting XP. Hutts have extra stats and threshold values, so they get 70 starting XP. A Cathar with the above abilities, and the baseline XP, strain, and wound values is fine, but it does leave out the more interesting aspects of Cathar in Saga Edition.

Saga Edition had action economy that strongly resembles D&D 4e, with Move, Swift, and Standard actions. Cathar had the ability to make a claw attack as a swift action when targeting an enemy with a melee attack once per encounter. SWRPG doesn’t really represent the concept of 1/encounter well, and also doesn’t really treat its actions the same way. Instead, it breaks things up into “Actions” and “Maneuvers”, where Maneuvers are mostly “things that don’t require rolls”. There are two ways I could see representing this. The one that most resembles the old rule would be to allow Cathar to make a claw attack as a maneuver once per session, during a turn in which they target an enemy with a melee attack. That’s a bit clunky, so it might be better to let them treat their claws as having the “Linked 2” property once/session. This is potentially stronger, but also forces you to make the initial attack with the claws, when you may be carrying something better. (If you’re a force user, possibly something significantly better.)
On Custom Content
Cathar also had a base movement rate of 8 squares, which was nearly unique to them. Humans and most other humanoid races had a base speed of 6 squares, and this difference was a large part of my race choice back then. My character’s ability to be almost anywhere on the battlefield in a single turn eventually became character-defining. Thanks to FF Star Wars using a more abstract movement system, there are limited ways to represent that. One option is allowing Cathar to move between medium/long or long/extreme ranges in a single maneuver, but that actually seems quite strong for a racial ability. A more reasonable alternative might be to grant them the Swift talent for free, which also has some precedent in other racial abilities.

Generally speaking, these are interesting ideas, but they’re beyond the scope of what most races have to offer in FF Star Wars. The only salvagable part from this session is getting Swift for free, and that should probably have a cost. With the Swift talent for free, more appropriate starting stats are probably 90 XP, Wound Threshold 9 + Brawn, Strain Threshold 11 + Willpower. Most races with a starting XP penalty pay for it somehow, and the talent and an extra point of strain seems like a fair tradeoff.

To Recap

Brawn Agility Intellect Cunning Willpower Presence
2 3 1 2 2 2
  • Wound Threshold: 9 + Brawn
  • Strain Threshold: 11 + Willpower
  • Starting Experience: 90 XP
  • Special Abilities: Cathar begin the game with one rank in either Athletics or Stealth. They still may not train Athletics or Stealth above fank 2 during Character Creation. They also begin with the Swift talent.
  • Claws: When a Cathar makes Brawl checks to deal damage to an opponent, he or she deals +1 Damage and has a Critical Rating of 3.

This hasn’t actually been approved yet, but we’ll see how it goes. Maybe I’ll play a human and it won’t matter anyway.

On Custom Content

by

Not too long ago, Tam wrote about not being entirely beholden to the rules as written, in the context of progression speed. He was speaking mostly from a GM perspective, but as a player, it’s not unreasonable to come to the same sort of conclusions. One of the time-honored ways of doing this is via conversion. As systems come and go, things are printed that for some reason or another, don’t make the new version. Sometimes there’s a good reason for this (See: D&D 4e’s Warlord), but other times they’re just left behind (5e doesn’t have an Eberron book yet, so it doesn’t have rules for Shifters, Changelings, or Warforged, even though Warforged were in one of the playtests). If these things really interest you, it’s reasonable to make changes that make sense for whatever system you’re playing in, and run it by your GM to see if the result is reasonable. (Note: this is not a standing excuse to min-max a thing you don’t like. Expect your GM to recognize it if you make it such, and react appropriately.)

On Custom Content
Related: Since Cathar are supposed to be rarer in the Old Republic era than other times, why is it that that’s the only era that has them in the games?

…which brings me to the actual topic of this post. A while back, we were in a Star Wars campaign based on the Saga Edition ruleset. We’re looking into playing in a new campaign based on the new Fantasy Flight rules, and I want to play a character similar to (but not identical to) the one I played previously. The first problem there is that I played a Cathar, and Cathar have not yet been printed for the new edition. (If I were a betting man, I’d bet that they’ll be in the Force and Destiny sourcebook focusing on the Seeker class, when that gets printed.) But given a base to work from (the Saga Edition Cathar), and given how races are structured, I think I can come up with a reasonable approximation.

The Easy Stuff

  • Races in FF Star Wars have 6 stats, which do not correspond cleanly to the familiar d20 stats: Brawn is a sort of mix between CON and STR, and CHA is split out into Cunning and Presence. Humans have 2 in each stat, but most other races have a stat at 3 and a stat at 1, with the rest staying at 2. Saga Edition Cathar had racial bonuses of +2 DEX, -2 INT, which corresponds neatly to starting Agility and Intelligence values of 3 and 1, respectively
  • Cathar in Saga Edition also get climb and stealth as automatic career skills, but skills are (usually) handled a bit differently now. Skill bonuses are granted as a free rank, and usually only in one skill. Some races get a choice of skills, and I think that approach fits here. This would mean Cathar get a free rank in Athletics or Stealth, but still cannot train either above rank 2 during character creation.
  • It’s possible to represent the Natural Weapon: Claws as a +1 damage on Brawl attacks, with a critical rating of 3. This is taken directly from Trandoshans.

The Hard Stuff

From there things get a bit complicated. Most races in SWRPG stop at 2 bonuses, and get 100 starting XP, a Strain Threshold of 10 + Willpower, and a Wound threshold of 10 + Brawn. These numbers appear to be used mostly as a balancing mechanism for other things that the race got. Humans didn’t get much else, so they get 110 starting XP. Hutts have extra stats and threshold values, so they get 70 starting XP. A Cathar with the above abilities, and the baseline XP, strain, and wound values is fine, but it does leave out the more interesting aspects of Cathar in Saga Edition.

Saga Edition had action economy that strongly resembles D&D 4e, with Move, Swift, and Standard actions. Cathar had the ability to make a claw attack as a swift action when targeting an enemy with a melee attack once per encounter. SWRPG doesn’t really represent the concept of 1/encounter well, and also doesn’t really treat its actions the same way. Instead, it breaks things up into “Actions” and “Maneuvers”, where Maneuvers are mostly “things that don’t require rolls”. There are two ways I could see representing this. The one that most resembles the old rule would be to allow Cathar to make a claw attack as a maneuver once per session, during a turn in which they target an enemy with a melee attack. That’s a bit clunky, so it might be better to let them treat their claws as having the “Linked 2” property once/session. This is potentially stronger, but also forces you to make the initial attack with the claws, when you may be carrying something better. (If you’re a force user, possibly something significantly better.)
On Custom Content
Cathar also had a base movement rate of 8 squares, which was nearly unique to them. Humans and most other humanoid races had a base speed of 6 squares, and this difference was a large part of my race choice back then. My character’s ability to be almost anywhere on the battlefield in a single turn eventually became character-defining. Thanks to FF Star Wars using a more abstract movement system, there are limited ways to represent that. One option is allowing Cathar to move between medium/long or long/extreme ranges in a single maneuver, but that actually seems quite strong for a racial ability. A more reasonable alternative might be to grant them the Swift talent for free, which also has some precedent in other racial abilities.

Generally speaking, these are interesting ideas, but they’re beyond the scope of what most races have to offer in FF Star Wars. The only salvagable part from this session is getting Swift for free, and that should probably have a cost. With the Swift talent for free, more appropriate starting stats are probably 90 XP, Wound Threshold 9 + Brawn, Strain Threshold 11 + Willpower. Most races with a starting XP penalty pay for it somehow, and the talent and an extra point of strain seems like a fair tradeoff.

To Recap

Brawn Agility Intellect Cunning Willpower Presence
2 3 1 2 2 2
  • Wound Threshold: 9 + Brawn
  • Strain Threshold: 11 + Willpower
  • Starting Experience: 90 XP
  • Special Abilities: Cathar begin the game with one rank in either Athletics or Stealth. They still may not train Athletics or Stealth above fank 2 during Character Creation. They also begin with the Swift talent.
  • Claws: When a Cathar makes Brawl checks to deal damage to an opponent, he or she deals +1 Damage and has a Critical Rating of 3.

This hasn’t actually been approved yet, but we’ll see how it goes. Maybe I’ll play a human and it won’t matter anyway.

Heading for a Trap

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Slightly Darker Side

Heading for a Trap

One of the ways I have differed so far from my friends, is that I cannot seem to bring myself to do ONLY the class story line.  As a result I am ridiculously over leveling the content, and last night I worked on finishing up Nar Shaddaa.  I’ve been enamored with the concept of the vertical city since first experiencing it in Dark Forces.  In SWTOR Nar Shaddaa is the darker and more disturbing cousin of Coruscant and provides a very similar leveling experience.  You travel through hub sections of the city until you end up in Shadow Town and resolve the central conflict of the story and your class quest.  As a Smuggler this setting feels extremely at home, and as you might expect I do in fact get into plenty of trouble with Bounty Hunters and Hutts.  Generally speaking when I have played SWTOR in the past, I am extremely light side focused.  In fact I generally have trouble not choosing the “blue” option on any quest dialog.  As a Smuggler however…  I am finding it a little easier to choose that “red” option.

I guess I am ultimately playing my version of Han Solo… the goodnatured lovable scoundrel.  When lives of innocents are on the line, I always end up choosing the “right” option and get those light side points.  However when I am in a situation where I serve to profit greatly by looking the other way…  I find myself “playing the character” and finding it significantly easier to to take those dark side points… and console myself with a pile of credits.  Similarly if I have been double crossed…  or if someone is doing something truly heinous…  I find it oh so satisfying to take that [Attack Them] option.  Horrific Imperial Scientist gene splicing people?  Nope! Blaster to the head with you!  Try and talk my way out of a bounty hunter?  Nope! Blaster to the head with you!  My weakness seems to be damsels in distress however…  because I know right now I am walking into a big trap but I am having to play it off like my character would.  It will also likely end up giving me another opportunity for sweet sweet revenge…  which I am sure I will be unable to resist taking dark side points for.  Thankfully I have diplomacy as a Crew Skill…  and even though it is likely at the end of a blaster…  it helps to repair all those dark side points.

Cavalcade of Commendations

Heading for a Trap

One of the good changes while not playing the game, is the fact that they standardized the planetary commendation system.  Now when you complete anything you have the option of simply taking “basic commendations” instead of the planet specific ones, and at the same time they have increased the total number you get before fifty exponentially.  This means that I am constantly swimming in a good supply of them, and I could probably constantly upgrade my moddable gear…  but I am finding that I don’t really need to.  Since I am using Treek as my tank and she came with a full set of mod gear, and I managed to piece together a workable set from the GTN and the pilot packs…  it allows me to pretty much ignore every quest reward and just go for more commendations.  Since I am quite overleveled I was 21 before leaving Coruscant, at which point I went to the fleet and kitted out both armor for myself and Treek in the best modifications I could find at the time.  This rather easily carried me through until the end of Nar Shadda, at which point I dinged 30 and repeated the same process with level 29 gear.  If I can continue this process of upgrading my gear “every other planet” I should be in really good shape to have a pile of commendations for other upgrades.

Last night I spent some of my pile of credits on making myself look cooler.  At some point they added in dye slots to the gear, which allows you to “socket” a dye that comes in either single color or dual tone combinations.  Most of the really cool combinations are exorbitantly expensive, but I found one I could live with that was black and grey for roughly 40,000 credits.  Then I went searching for a really cool gun, and found this one that is originally a cartel item… that folks were selling fairly reasonably on the market.  The gun you end up with at the end of the starter zone is functional but not that cool looking… so I was more than happy to cast aside “Flashy”.  I dig the fact that it looks like the blaster rifles that some of the troopers have.  It fits my shoot first, ask questions later style of playing the “Sawbones” healer.  I have long said that “looking cool” makes your character feel cool, and I am pretty happy with my Chiss Smuggler.  I am extremely happy that I re-rolled him ages ago as a Chiss instead of yet another human.  I am starting to develop this “savior of the aliens” rep in my questing choices, which is kinda awesome since people keep pointing out the fact that I am another “alien scum”.  Still having a surprising amount of fun playing through the Smuggler storyline that I ultimately missed at launch.

Star Wars Disappointments

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Force Friday

Star Wars Disappointments
Borrowed from the Disney Blog – Force Friday Merch at a disney store

 

Once upon a time I was a die hard Star Wars fan and more importantly collector.  Throughout my childhood, my parents enabled the collecting of Star Wars figures, and in truth I think my parents got more into it than I did.  There was a certain thrill in chasing down those last few figures that I did not have.  So it was not a huge surprise in 1996 when the figured were re-released to the marketplace that I got back into it.  In fact there were so many of my college friends who went damned near bankrupt buying various bits of star wars merchandise.  This fervor was only made more insane by the re-release of the movies in the theaters.  My wife was a trooper and tolerated the shit out of my habits, and I even got her into sifting through the racks looking for this or that figure.  However when I went to see Phantom Menace it pretty much killed my desire to keep doing that.  I know it is cliche’d but I still have not reconciled the disappointment I feel over the prequels.  I am sure taken without the viewpoint of a lifetime of nostalgia and hero worship over the original movies…  they are probably not that horrible.  However for me personally… they were just a bunch of cool lightsaber battles and the bits of movie I tolerated until I got to see more of said lightsaber battles.  The problem is it is a habit you never really kick, and on a regular basis I filter through the toy isle and look at the star wars figures.  I still have a handful of figures hanging out around my office.

With the announcement of Force Awakens, I have to say I have been getting pretty damned excite about it.  So when I heard about this Force Friday thing where they would be releasing in bulk all of the Force Awakens merchandise out into the stores…. it made me think of the sheer excitement I felt when they released all of the Phantom Menace merchandise.  Now I know people who went out Thursday night at midnight for the official first moments…  me however…  I am past the whole doing something at midnight time.  The last item I purchased like that was probably the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.  I did however need to run get cat food over lunch and while I was at Target, there as no way in hell you could keep me from going through the Star Wars isles.  From the moment I stepped into the store things just felt strange.  They had this huge cardboard stand-up of Chewbacca near the front entrance in the dollar section…  asking patrons of the store to take a selfie with it… and do your best Chewie Roar.  I mean I realize this is Disney we are talking about…  a company that has made its entire career by capitalizing on our nostalgia.  It just felt somehow more cheap… more commercial…  more forced.  It didn’t help that quite literally you could not go for very far in the store without running into some bit of Force Awakens merchandise stuffed here or there.  I mean even in the home goods section they had cups on one of the end caps.

Low Quality Figures

Star Wars Disappointments

The thing I regret is not having taken any good pictures, because for this next section it would help out quite a bit.  They had a dedicated section set up in the seasonal area, and I of course made a bee line there expecting it to be some sort of a one stop shop for all of the merchandise.  Now there was quite a bit there, but one thing was missing completely…  the standard sized Star Wars action figures that I collected so many years.  For those I had to go to the traditional “Star Wars” isle in the toy section, and they had a fair assortment.  I had a Kylo Ren and a Captain Phasma in my hands, when I started to notice a few things about the figures.  Firstly the cards they were on felt really cheap compared to modern Star Wars toys.  Instead of a thick piece of cardboard with printing on both sides… it was some sort of a sandwiched construction made out of a bunch of thinner layers of cardboard which gave it a very irregular look.  Then I started paying attention to the figures themselves…. and while the sculpts themselves were fairly nice…  the paint jobs were atrocious.  It looked like they had applied the worst sort of rush treatment to get them out the door in time for this “big event”.  I’ve been looking for images that illustrate my point, but all i can really say is that it felt like they were a paint by number that just could not stay inside of the lines.

On the storm troopers for example… large chunks of black were globed over onto the white sections of armor.  The Captain Phasma figures that I had seen preview shots of had a nice satin sheen to them to simulate the chrome armor.  Instead the figure I had in my hand was a dull matte hunk of largely unpainted grey plastic.  I looked at figure after figure and they all seemed to have these same basic defects that just made them look cheaply produced.  The thing is…  this is not the standard I am used to in Star Wars figures.  I have a bunch of the more modern figures… and they all had excellent paint jobs.  Granted the “newest” figure I have is of Savage Opress, but it still is a figure from the last few years.  The twelve inch figures looked a little better, but they were still not really up to the standards I would expect from that sort of a figure.  On the positive however… the Funko Pop figures looked amazing as always, and the Lego display I saw looked amazing.  Lego is on of those companies that is always spot on when it comes to quality, and you know that for the most part anything you buy will be perfectly formed and defect free.  Hasbro on the other hand…  seems to have slipped massively, and if I were them I would be ashamed of the quality of this figure line.

Still Spinning

Star Wars Disappointments

I find it extremely bizarre that I have yet to get Diablo 3 out of my system.  When I came home last night from work, I immediately plunked myself down on the sofa, put something on Hulu and started working on bounties for crafting materials.  At this point I am two achievements away from getting my season four toys, and I think probably I can knock one of them off soon.  The biggest challenge seems to be getting legendaries to drop so that I can fill gear slots with them.  More so than that… the real challenge is getting legendary rings and a necklace with gem slots in them…  because with the introduction of legendary gems no piece of level 70 jewelry is really viable without a gem slot.  I hear tell that there are items in the game that you can use to socket items, but I have yet to actually see any of them.  Right now I would settle for a second level 70 ring so that I can maybe knock out the legendary in every slot achievement.  Still enjoying the barbarian, but it gets frustrating the higher I dial up torment because I just take so damned much damage…  since I require being in the thick of everything to deal any real damage.  At this point Torment 1 is my new normal, and I keep thinking the more paragon levels I pour on… the easier things will get.  In the mean time I will keep plugging away at Rifts and Bounties until I get the items I actually need to drop.