Star Wars d20

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Star Wars d20 is a d20 System game made by Wizards of the Coast. It's set in the Star Wars universe. Preceded by The Star Wars d6 game.

After Wizards let the license go, it has currently passed to Fantasy Flight Games and now they are doing their own RPG.

All systems have their advantages and disadvantages

Star Wars "Revised" Edition

Basically Star Wars D&D 3rd Edition.

Saga Edition

System

Was a revised "revised" edition, so they just called it the "Saga" Edition.

It basically followed the D20 system from D&D but with a great number of differences that put it somewhere in between 3.5e and 4e in the ruleset, which is actually a good thing:

• Skills come in "trained" and "untrained" rather than tracking bazilions of skill points which makes character management much easier.
• In another nice touch, Armour Class has also been removed, meaning you take your defenses based on your Reflex/Will/Fortitude modifiers.
  • Wearing armour provide bonuses to Reflex saves and occasionally Fortitude, but negates any "Heroic bonus" you might gain based on your level, so armour is only really a good thing for lower level characters who have low bonuses, or high level characters specifically trained to use armour.
• Levelling is free-form, you just gain talents from trees available to your class so there is no "End" ability that you have to wait for in levelling up, or might miss if you multi-class.
  • It also means that two players playing the same class can have absolutely no abilities in common whatsoever.
• Inclusion of "Force" and "Destiny" points, which are a limited pool of points used by player characters which can be used to modify dice rolls, regardless of whether you are Force sensitive or not.
• Another great advantage of this system was its use of the metric system.

The game features five (and only five) core classes:

• Jedi
• Soldier
• Scout
• Noble
• Scoundrel

Though as mentioned earlier, because the classes simply provide access to talent trees rather than pre-determined level benefits, players who choose the same class can build themselves entirely differently and shouldn't need to be hemmed into a particular class-role if they don't want to.

Anyone can use the force too, there are entire chapters providing Talents for Force sensitive characters that are essentially universal talents which can be taken by any class. So you don't need to be a Jedi to be an effective force user, which itself adds to the freedom of gameplay as you could be a force-wielding scoundrel and never actually take any talent from the scoundrel trees at all.

The game actively encourages multi-classing though, and there is a "modest" (in comparison to 3e D&D) number of prestige classes available that which provide access to their own, usually restricted list of Talent trees, but also provide class abilities with the core classes don't provide. For example: the "Jedi Master" prestige class provides Force Secrets which are like metamagic feats and can modify your Force powers in cool ways.

Sourcebooks

• Saga Edition rulebook - The Core rulebook
• Threats of the Galaxy - basically the Monster Manual
• Starships of the Galaxy - rules for modifying starships and equipment as well as tons of vehicles.
• Scavengers Guide to Droids - rules for droid PCs and NPCs
• Scum and Villainy - rules for everything non-force related
• Rebellion Era Campaign Guide - rules for playing the rebellion, also added character background rules
• Clone Wars Campaign Guide - one of the best sourcebooks, adds elegant follower/minion rules that act as extensions of the PCs rather than additional party members. Also adds rules for massed combat.
• Force Unleashed Campaign Guide - essentially rules for Epic characters, but can be taken at any level. Allowing you to use your limited number of Destiny points to perform Epic shit like in the video game (ie: pulling star destroyers out of the sky)
• Knights of the Old Republic Campaign Guide - another pretty good sourcebook covering rules for pretty much everything including lightsaber combat for non-jedi as well as loads of rules for Mandalorian and non-Jedi force users.
• Legacy Era Campaign Guide - the time after the films, including the return of the two different Empires (with different rules for Imperial Knights and Sith)
• Galaxy at War - rules benefits for joining large organisations, but mostly just a filler book
• Galaxy of Intrigue - variant rules for skill challenges, basically a non-combat book.
• Jedi Academy: Training Manual - book of Force Talents, and also includes tons of other force using traditions other than Jedi that can grant talents if you are a member. Also includes rules for variant lightsabers and the effects of swapping crystals
• Unknown Regions - another filler book, but mostly a book to allow GMs to just make stuff up

Criticisms

Saga edition loosely followed Star Wars canon for how strength in the force works, meaning that Force Sensitive characters pwn everything and outshine non-sensitive characters. While everyone can be influenced by the Force (allowing them to use up "Force points" to modify dice rolls) -Actual characters with any force talents/feats can min-max their character to do pretty much anything and therefore only need to improve their ability to Use the Force.

• For example: the "Force Pilot" talent allows players to use their Force skill instead of Pilot skill, while the "Force Persuasion" talent also allows players to use the force instead of their Persuasion skill, Force Healing and so on and so forth. Someone with "Force Block/Deflect" can negate attacks on them with a Use the Force check and a lightsaber. So basically these characters only need one skill (and only one skill) to play the game.

Also, the logistics of the system was an unwieldy clusterfuck, which is probably one of the reasons that Wizards could not sustain the system. Rather than having each class self contained in a single sourcebook and then presenting a new class with a new book, the problem with having and keeping so few classes was that options for the classes were presented EVERYWHERE. Meaning your character build could easily have options taken from every single sourcebook to the point that you'd forget where it all came from, and becomes a paperwork nightmare. This is further hindered with some options just being thrown in to whichever sourcebook was released at the time, meaning it's not very intuitive in figuring out where a particular rule comes from.