D20 Star Wars to C&C?

Treebore · Post by **Treebore** » Mon Oct 09, 2006 8:39 am

My 10 year old is really into Star Wars. To the point where he begged me for months to get him the Rulebook for D20. I finally found it at Books A Million about a month ago.

He has been reading it as often as he can for the last couple of weeks.

He ran it for us today. He did great on the story aspects, but the d20 rules were kicking his butt. He even gave me kudo's for DMing so much, because it isn't easy.

Anyways.

As I read through the rules I didn't see any reason why the C&C SIEGE engine combined with my house rules about feats wouldn't work, and be much easier for him, and converting the races, classes, and monsters would be somewhat time consuming, but not hard to figure out. At least from what I saw and as far as I understood what I read.

So do you think my feat house rule:

To attempt any "feat" like action it is TN 12 + HD of opponent to accomplish.

will work for force skills/feats.

I am intending on treating all force skills like they are actually feats.

As for vitality/damage, I think we can keep that mechanic as long as we keep all weapon Damage the same.

So we could even keep the Vitality costs for the force powers in the game.

About the only thing I really wonder about is two, maybe 3 things right now.

First, the 3 categories of "force skills". They clearly intend for you to gain access to them at 1st, 3rd, then 4th level. Alter, Control, and Sense being the category.

I am thinking it would be a good idea for me to keep the level requirement and have choices be made at these levels. Plus have them keep an effective -2 and -3 to their level for checks in the second and third choices.

My second worry isn't very big if I keep the vitality costs in the game, but if I remove that cost I do think it will make Jedi too powerful. If I do keep Vitality costs it would make Force Adept (as magic users) viable, not to mention give me a kind of points based system to replace Vancian magic with in Castles and Crusades.

My third worry is speed of progression due to xp's in C&C. Flavor wise I think it works, because in the movies they did spend a decade or more of their young lives before even becoming a "first level Padawan".

What does concern me is that this system seems a lot more lethal than just using normal HP's. Wound points are equal to our CON score. I understand that they have to get through your vitality points first, but that may not be hard on Jedi or Force Adepts who are using their powers alot.

So if my suspicion is correct, if they also take a long time to level up, and gain more Vitality points, I am very likely to see frequent character deaths in comparison to faster advancement in d20.

So hopefully some of you are very familiar with D20 Star Wars, and if so, not only would I have not wasted all this time writing up this post, I would like your views about my concerns based on your much more extensive experience.

moriarty777 · Post by **moriarty777** » Mon Oct 09, 2006 10:02 pm

I sorry to say that I'm not as familiar with the d20 version of StarWars. I've thought about picking it up once or twice but haven't. In theory, it should be possible to apply the SIEGE engine to it. I've actually been thinking of doing something like that but I was looking at WEG's Star Wars which was, in my opinion, a great RPG (and also very rules light). However, in terms of the d20 version, is there any way that the force skills/powers can be treated as spells or other type of spell/magic mechanic?

Moriarty the Red
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Veritas · Post by **Veritas** » Mon Oct 09, 2006 10:10 pm

I've played quite a bit of Star Wars (both d6 and d20) and I own quite a few of the books for each.

One thing... for base Force abilities, vary the order you get them based on what class you pick (like they did in the 1st edition of the d20 game). So, the Jedi Guardian gets Control first, then Sense, then Alter. The Jedi Consular gets Sense, Control, Alter, and the Force Adept gets Alter, Sense, Control.

For using the Force, I'd recommend switching all Force abilities to the way they were done in the d6 game... well, unless you already use feats in your C&C games, or wish to stick with feats. The d6 game had the three Force abilities (control, sense, alter), and then put all the various skills under these abilities... so that telekinesis is an alter skill, sense force is a sense skill, battlemind is a control skill... and there would be certain ones that require more than one ability, and thus could only be taken later in the Jedi's development.

Make Control Charisma-based, Sense Wisdom-Based, and Alter Intelligence-based.

So, when you start as a Jedi Guardian, you gain Control as your first Force Ability. The Jedi Guardian can choose three Force skills that are under the Control category. When they reach 2nd level, they can pick another. When they reach 3rd level, they gain Sense, and can pick another skill, from either Control or Sense (or one that uses both, if we go that way). Fourth level they gain Alter and get another skill, which can be picked from any of the categories.

Each of the skills uses the Attribute of the Force category, with the rolls being modified as you say, so that Sense is at -2 and Alter is at -3 for a Jedi Guardian.

That will all take some organization, but I think that might be the simplest way of doing it while stay away from feats (unless, like I said, you WANT feats. ).

I would definitely keep the Vitality and Wound system. It *is* more lethal, but that works both ways. Adopt the armor rules of the game where armor is damage resistance (which reduces wound damage). Jedi will be deflecting blasts left and right when they get up there, anyways, so you likely won't have to worry much about them.
As far as advancement goes, there's lots of action in SW games, and you could tailor the xp awards easily to compensate for the slower level advancement of the C&C rules.

Veritas · Post by **Veritas** » Mon Oct 09, 2006 10:24 pm

Okay, so if you're just using the base rulebook, this is the way it would be organized...

Control Skills (Cha):

Battlemind

Enhance Ability

Force Defense

Force Stealth

Heal Self

Burst of Speed

Dissipate Energy

Lightsaber Defense

Friendship

Sense Skills (Wis):

Empathy

Enhance Senses

Farseeing

Fear

See Force

Telepathy

Force Mind

Alter (Int):

Affect Mind

Drain Energy

Force Grip

Force Lightning

Force Strike

Heal Another

Illusion

Move Object

Force Flight

Mind Trick

Now, some of these won't require rolls for them, but will simply be that once you have the ability, you can take that skill and it provides you with whatever bonus(es) that come from it. This isn't a complete list, either... just a preliminary one. I might want to shuffle some around to require more than one ability to use them (those would require both rolls to work properly), although that might making things more complicated than they need to be.

Orpheus · Post by **Orpheus** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 12:07 am

Nice! Hey Veritas, I noticed that you are in Marietta. So am I. If you ever decide to try a C&C Star Wars game just let me know. I'd like to be a guinea pig for that.

Veritas · Post by **Veritas** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 2:14 am

Orpheus wrote:
Nice! Hey Veritas, I noticed that you are in Marietta. So am I.

Yeah, my wife and I just moved here last month from Connecticut.

Quote:
If you ever decide to try a C&C Star Wars game just let me know. I'd like to be a guinea pig for that.

I'm pretty swamped at the moment, but Treebore has me intrigued about this stuff... I'd be interested in helping serleran with his Gamma World C&C too (I'm a sucker for rules converting. heh). Starting an actual game campaign, though, is more work. heh. I'll think about it, though.
You know, I've been curious about converting the Vitality & Wounds system to C&C for the fantasy game. I did so for d20 D&D (before the Unearthed Arcana came out) and it worked pretty well. The thing holding me back is that monsters in C&C don't have Con scores anymore. Using V&W in a Star Wars version would be easier, though, since pretty much all your opponents are going to be sentient humanoids.

Treebore · Post by **Treebore** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 4:35 am

Generally speaking the monsters do have stat scores, all in the average range. So they would have a CON of 10 to 12, unless I decided to give them something better.

Veritas · Post by **Veritas** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 5:58 am

Yeah, I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to just assign creatures Con scores on the fly. Maybe I'll give it a try.

What do you think of the Star Wars ideas, though?

Treebore · Post by **Treebore** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 6:09 am

I think they will work. My son is definitely up to it. I am going to make him "do" all the work, because I think it will be a great learning experience for him. Not just for gaming, but I think this will give him great experience for writing various essays and reports in the future.

To give an example of what I am going for I had a teacher in HS that required us to hand write a 28 page report on shakespeare plays utilizing at least 12 sources with proper bibliography.

I did it. Even got a 94 on it. When I asked Mrs. Brown why the heck she assigned us such a big project, hand written, she said, "So that you'll always know that you can do it."

At the time I understood what she meant, but it took me decades to appreciate just how valuable/important it was.

So I am hoping to have him do the lionshare of the work for much the same reason. I am hoping because he is so passionate about it he will find the perseverance to do it. So I am hoping this will do for him what my Shakespeare paper did for me. We'll see.

Veritas · Post by **Veritas** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 6:26 am

Sounds awesome, Treebore.
I know I enjoy that kind of work quite a bit. Hopefully he'll have a lot of fun with it.