Saga Edition Preview 5

Advanced Combat Training

By Rodney Thompson

Saga Edition Archive General FAQs Product page Preview 1: Classes and character creation Preview 2: Skill system Preview 3: Using the Force Preview 4: Combat

The changes to the combat system in the Star Wars Roleplaying Game Saga Edition rulebook are extensive. Last week's preview revealed some of the most basic changes, including the elimination of iterative attacks and the method for calculating defenses. This preview covers further changes to the combat system intended to make combat faster and more intuitive.

Aiding Another

The basics of the Aid Another action remain the same in the new version of the rules. Characters still make checks against a DC of 10 to provide a +2 bonus on another character's action. However, two changes to the Aid Another rules encourage cooperation in combat.

1. Characters can now use Aid Another to grant a +2 bonus to an ally's attack roll against a target as long as they both have line of sight to the target. The target no longer needs to be engaged in melee combat with the ally.
2. Instead of using Aid Another to grant a bonus to an individual ally's Defense scores, you can use it to lay down suppressing fire against an opponent. As a result, the target takes a –2 penalty on attack rolls for 1 round.

These changes make the Aid Another action easier to use in combat, and they provide more legitimate options for characters that have difficulty damaging a target.

Aiming

Saga Edition includes the ability to aim. When aiming with a ranged weapon, you can take two consecutive swift actions in a round to line up the shot carefully. On your next attack, you ignore all cover bonuses to your target's Reflex Defense, provided that you don't lose line of sight to your target or take any other actions before making your attack. Furthermore, you can enhance your attacks with the Careful Shot feat and the Deadeye feat, which provide benefits such as increased attack bonuses and extra damage.

Critical Hits

To speed up game play further, we simplified the way that critical hits work. In Saga Edition, a natural 20 is an automatic critical hit that deals double damage. All weapons default to this method of scoring a critical hit, though some talents and feats can augment critical hits in different ways. This change streamlines combat and encourages players to enjoy the rush of a natural 20. Rather than being deflated by a poor roll to confirm a critical hit, players can enjoy their natural 20 as an automatic success -- and a big one at that.

Of course, the change also means that low-level enemies, such as stormtroopers and battle droids, can hit a character pretty hard, making a critical hit a true critical hit regardless of the attacker's level.

Order the Retreat and Keep Moving!

Under the old rules, if a character in melee combat wanted to move away from an opponent, he had to spend his entire action disengaging and moving to safety. In Saga Edition, the disengage action has been replaced by the withdraw action, which uses slightly different mechanics.

Withdrawing is a move action that lets you move up to half your movement speed. Your first square of movement no longer provokes an attack of opportunity. However, you can withdraw only if you are moving into a square that is not threatened; otherwise, you must take a normal move action.

This change reflects the mobile and fluid nature of Star Wars combat. Characters should no longer feel as if they must choose between withdrawing and attacking, because now they can do both.

In addition, we changed some feats slightly to make mobile combat more appealing. For example, consider the Running Attack feat:

Multiple feats (Shot on the Run and Spring Attack) have been condensed into a single feat that has fewer prerequisites. This change encourages a style of combat often seen in the Star Wars films, in which mobile heroes dash in, attack, and keep moving.

Likewise, a character can now dash between two large objects that can be used for cover, fire her weapon between them, and retain her cover bonus to Reflex Defense. This should encourage heroes to be more mobile and take greater advantage of cover than ever before.

All-New Autofire

In previous editions of the Star Wars Roleplaying Game, the autofire rules slowed down combat because they involved making extra rolls and referencing a massive table. In Saga Edition, we simplified the autofire rules, making them more like those seen in other d20 System games.

A character with an autofire-capable weapon can switch to autofire mode by taking a swift action. Then she targets a 2-square-by-2-square area within the weapon's range and makes an attack roll with that weapon at a –5 penalty. Compare the result of the roll to the Reflex Defense of any targets within the area. Any creatures hit take full damage from the attack, while creatures missed take half damage. Autofire requires a standard action and consumes 10 shots, whether that represents charges from a power pack or slugs from a slugthrower.

Some special abilities reduce the penalties on autofire attacks, while others provide new uses for the autofire rules. For example, the Burst Fire feat allows you to use a weapon set on autofire against a single target at the normal –5 penalty. If you hit the target, you deal an extra 2 dice of damage. Since the attack isn't an area attack, it doesn't deal half damage on a miss, and the damage can't be reduced with the scout's Evasion talent.

Stun and Ion Damage

Stun damage and ion damage both received overhauls so they'd work better with the new damage threshold and condition track rules.

If a living target is hit by a stun attack, compare the stun damage (which is now the same as the weapon's normal damage) to the target's damage threshold. If the stun damage exceeds the damage threshold, the target moves 2 steps down the condition track; otherwise, the attack has no additional effect. Half of the stun damage is then subtracted from the target's hit points. To use a stun weapon, a character must be within 6 squares of her target (except when she's using stun grenades, which create a radius effect).

Ion weapons work much the same way, except they affect only droids, vehicles, objects, and characters with cybernetic enhancements. In addition, ion weapons can be fired at normal ranges and are not subject to the same 6-square limitation as stun weapons.

Reserve Shield Rules

We revised the shield rules to make them more consistent with what we see in the Star Wars movies (and to enhance the starship combat rules, which will be covered in an upcoming preview). Instead of having shield points, which work like reserve hit points, all shielded objects now have a shield rating (SR) that acts like damage reduction against incoming attacks. For example, a droideka has SR 20, which means that its shields absorb 20 points of damage much in the same way that DR absorbs damage. However, unlike damage reduction, when an attack exceeds the target's shield rating, its SR is reduced by 5. Starships and droids with shields can take actions to recharge their shields to their normal maximum.

The new rules mean that a single lucky shot will no longer eliminate a target's shields. Instead, knocking out shields will require several hits, or even a constant bombardment by multiple attackers.

High-Level Combat

Taken together, the changes described above -- plus other changes not covered in this preview -- make combat faster and more like the action of the Star Wars movies. As an added benefit, combat runs much faster at higher level, too. Since most characters have only one attack per round, most rounds consist of no more than three actions. A 20th-level character's turn lasts just about as long as a 1st-level character's turn (accounting for a greater number of options at higher levels, of course). Moreover, enemies using the nonheroic class continue to act as cannon fodder even at high levels, letting heroes face threats that can be taken down in one or two hits even as they come face to face with 20th-level Sith Lords.

More to Come

In the next preview of Saga Edition -- droids, droids, droids!